They have moved on from pharmaceutical doping due to the extensive testing to what is referred to as "mechanical doping". Motors are hidden in hubs/frames and the organisation is busy doing everything they can to pretend that it isn't a problem.
I see the early stand-up in a different way. I don't derive anything other than interruption and inconvenience from a stand-up so I'd rather get it out of the way first thing then I can get on with my work for the rest of the day without interruption.
Regarding the number of insects around I've heard British farmers saying that neonicotinoids targeted certain insect species and since the ban they have switched back to using a broad ranging insecticide which kills everything. Whilst the insect population decline is certainly a phenomena which pre-dates the ban this change is hardly going to help, although maybe it is the lesser of two evils.
No just startups, there are established companies who take enough of their revenue from involvement in EU sponsored projects that it effectively become the sole purpose of their business. I've been involved in a few of these projects (for a fairly legitimate firm) but you encounter the same companies over and over again.
One of the goals of these projects is often to do an initial development phase and then bring in a new tranche of companies to trial/expand what you have developed. There are groups of companies that have developed a symbiotic relationship where one of them gets into a particular project and then pulls in their fellows in the subsequent round. It is also common to see them tendering to diverse projects in the hope that one of them gets accepted and they all then pile into it.
The formal review meetings that I have attended have been extremely uncomfortable because I know that the people are on stage flat out lying about what they have achieved. Generally all they have done is some token development so provide a few screenshots for a presentation and then talk about how it has revolutionised their business whilst pocketing the vast majority of the cash.
The standby instruments were working and falling back to them in the event of a primary flight display failure is part of the training