Hello, thanks for your message. We are aware of our notification issue and we're working on a fix right now. As for the trending/recommendation lists, Nostr is not a huge network so there will be familiar faces on the trending pages. We order our trending lists based on content scores.
Ok using nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg for almost 24 hours but I'm already getting a lot of quirks. Seeing a lot of double notes and notifications. For example: 
I also regurarly get the message that an event could not be published after I signed it.
And about all the trending / recommendations lists in the client, it feels too centralized as I still see the same names / content as one year ago. This volume of repetition is quite annoying. It's too distracting, it's not relevant and often not contextual too.
So meehhh it still does not feel good enough for me. But I know I'm a power user so that's why noStrudel fits me better.
Discussion
You've got a whole fediverse where you can fetch from if you think that Nostr is not big enough to discover new stuff ;) Is there an option in the settings to turn those lists off? Otherwise I need to build an browser extension for it hehe ;)