It's not the difficulty swings that are the problem; it's the block frequency. If you look, the last several blocks are coming out very frequently, indicating that suddenly there is a lot more hashing power in the network. The difficulty swinging way up is the appropriate response.
When the hashing power leaves, and blocks become infrequent, the difficulty will swing way back down so that blocks don't take days.
still broke, still useless, still dead?
Yes to all three.
This coin is going nowhere.