Re: rush to merge...the longer we go without merging, the more work I have to do to keep up with trunk changes that affect my code (e.g. getting rid of the top-level mixxx directory, which "git merge" handled badly, requiring me to do a LOT of hand-work to make things right again).  This is wasted effort.

Re: style comments...in my experience, as long as the code is human-readable, that's more than enough.  If one is modifying someone else's code, one should try very hard to mimic the local style, so that the changes don't look jarring next to older code.  Anything on top of that is needlessly pedantic.