Note first that the piece is not about zacusca.net itself. It's saying 'You should go out of your way to build on a protocol. Even if the protocol is 'dead'. Perhaps I can clarify that.
Regarding Zacusca, I appreciate you explaining why it doesn't seem useful. First, it's not for everyone. Some people like reverse chron as an algorithm. Second, let me clarify how the pipeline works. But I think I explain the import/export poorly: - you export the feed addresses - you set up the categories - Zacusca continously polls the imported feeds, sorts them into the categories and exposes the categories as new feeds
So it's fire and forget. And you can keep your existing feeds as duplicates if you want.