> all library functions being in the global scope

Ever used C?

> lack of sane naming conventions for those things

Absolutely annoying but also fairly minimal. Mostly an issue in the string & array functions.

> terrible type conversions

Weak typing has to coerce somehow. Javascript is equally "terrible" at times.

> unsafe libraries

Such as? All the major libraries are thread-safe that I'm aware of

> starting php with every request

PHP exists outside of the web, and even in the web environment, you can run it as fastcgi since inception as a persistent daemon and php-fpm is the standard daemon now as well.

> being able to drop raw php right into html templates

I view that as a feature (which is often abused by beginners)