There was a fag from Khartoum
Who took a lesbian up to his room
They spent the whole night
arguing who had the right
to do what and with what to whom.

(The most grammatically correct limerick I know...)

Is there still any prospect at all? I left 5 years ago because they stopped improving anything for a decade.

Emacs still has plenty of awesome projects going on, just that they're bloody haphazardly organised. You need to really go look for them and sometimes some minor assembly is required.

For example, the single most awesome Emacs package right now is Org-Mode, which especially speaks to me as a writer (a lot of writers swear by Scrivener, but screw it, we have a better open source alternative in Org). You'll note that it's developed outside of Emacs proper with its own release schedule. You'll note that if you want the newer versions (which aren't always required, the ones shipped with Emacs itself are usually pretty decent) you need to get the git version or use the one from Emacs ELPA package manager, which in itself is still kind of in early stages and not many projects make themselves available through it (translation: I use a whole bunch of emacs extensions, but none of them are available through ELPA). If you want nifty extensions for Org, you really need to hunt random files all around the interwebs and pray they actually work in current version of Org.

This sort of disorganisation is actually just what Emacs has been all about for decades. The core Emacs devs don't innovate that much (well, at least they do add cool new features in major releases, which is a good thing), and just package the outside contributions whenever they can. There's all sorts of cool shit going on, but you just wouldn't always know where to find them.

(That said, if you want to develop Java or C++, NetBeans just blows Emacs off the water.)

During the Colorado flood, the area around it was under temporary flight restrictions, as determined by the FAA, and no unauthorized aircraft were allowed to fly in it.
While TFR's are getting vastly more common as every penny-ante promoter wants to make every event seem so big it needs special FAA protection to allow it to run, the reality is that 99% of the time, 99% of the airspace is available for private and commercial air operations.

While I entirely agree with your position, something to consider is that there is a logically consistent stance embedded in there. If you believe that everyone is a sinner and should try to reduce the amount that they sin, then it's consistent to sin while being vocally opposed to sinning: the person may regret the behavior and pray for forgiveness and all those other weird things people to do try to make themselves feel better about natural impulses that their churches have told them are bad. I think that situation is practically universal among evangelical religious types of most religions. They're all trying to force themselves and everyone else to hold high standards of living, and while failures to do so are inevitable they're still bad.

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

To me, this sounds like a pretty open and shut case of "Hey, I've heard that these 'NoSQL' database thingies are trendy these days. Let's use one of those!"

There's a difference between using fun, exciting new technologies and learning something new while doing that... and doing a project which stays in schedule and budget, is based on technology you already know thoroughly, and on which people's lives can depend (well, indirectly).

Sure it doesn't do what a good logic analyzer does, but it's fast. Current project: trying to get an Ohaus digital scale's RS232 output talking via an FTDI serial-to-usb to my computer. Scope-to-computer works great. Computer-to-scope doesn't work at all. Hook up probes to the TX and RX lines and I can immediately see that something's going from minicom to the Ohaus, and the voltage is roughly what I'd expect. On RS232 that's a serious question, and one that most of the usb logic analyzers I've worked with don't address: is the voltage high enough to trigger something that may be expecting 12 volts?
And I'd like to see what it's actually sending. Hit the trigger button and type something in, and there it is on the screen. Save it, type in something else, overlay them. Hey, the FTDI is stripping off the terminal linefeed! That's good to know, given that the Ohaus absolutely requires CR,LF.
That took me about thirty seconds with a scope. It'd take me longer to start up the USB logic analyzer program and get it set up.

Another advantage, if purchasers care to implement it, is that you can have somewhat intelligent LED lights that dim down to 30% when there's no traffic around, so it's still light, but much lower power, then run back up when traffic is a block away. It doesn't add much to the system cost to add motion detection and communication with nearby lights, particularly since some industrial/commercial LED lights are adding selftest health/failure reporting already.