I have been inactive on Scratch for about a year, and I'm wondering what changes have happened since I was gone. Site updates, bug fixes, new/depleted rules, scratcher dramas etc etc

There's a stickied changelog: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/795061/

That said, the three biggest updates so far have been updating [scratchblocks] to 3.0, updating the Ideas and Community Guidelines pages, and adding a “Debug” button in the editor (which gives you advice and exactly zero debugging tools).

You again…

Since I'm bored, I might as well.

Here's some of the new stuff I can think of from the top of my head.

• There's a confirmation window for if you really want to delete a sprite, likely added so you wouldn't delete a sprite on accident
  

• There's now a debug section, which mainly offers suggestions for troubleshooting Scratch projects.
  

• Scratchers under 16 now have to have parental consent to participate in social aspects of the Scratch website. They can still make and save projects, though.
  

• When you visit another person's profile and view their followers/following(yet don't visit the actual followers/following page), the accounts shown may be randomized, rather than show the most recent followers/following(I.e. A bunch of namesnipes accounts I followed years ago show up, along with ones I followed recently)

Learn more at the Scratch Wiki: Scratch Update History and Scratch Timeline