The discussion was not about writing a new Lisp or Lisp-like language, but a clone of Reddit.
The fact that HN is a site that performs a function very similar to Reddit, and happens to be written in a dialect of Lisp is completely coincidental :-D (unless there has been some comment by pg about his motivations for making HN that I missed, but I kind of doubt it).
I believe pg stated that HN was supposed to be what reddit was originally.
Yep, spot-on. It's the same with those guys who wanted to make a Facebook clone focused on privacy or whatever. Lots of talk and then you never hear about the project again.
Is the project really dead though? I have no personal experience, but these stats show a growing number of active users: http://pods.jasonrobinson.me/
Likely consumed by meta-patterns, like every other project who's primary reason to exist is to be a LISP clone of something.