I think I figured out the feed problem

The friends preset used to have all sliders set to the left except the first slider, and one about comments. I never wanted to to see comments, so would always slide it back left. There was one slider, for relevance, which the preset used to slide all the way to the left.

The other day, they changed the friends preset to put the relevance slider all the way to the right. So I slid it back to the left, since I thought maybe I needed it that way, like it was before.

A few minutes ago, I tried the friends preset, as is. That is, I left the relevance slider alone, where it was preset to be on the right. I still slid the comments slider to the left, as always.

All the people listed are on my circle now. Success!