this shit looks like new.reddit, which I hate

A bit, but it’s fine if the similarities are superficial. At a quick glance it seems to be functionally about on par with the standard UI.

If it’s not a lot of work for you to implement, I could be interested in trying it out even though I’m mostly happy with the current UI, believe it or not. I mostly wish it were easier to follow new comments in threads.

it looks like someone with UX experience was at least in proximity to this at the time it was designed?

On this site I can’t tell if this is meant as a positive or negative thing.