Your `ipv6` USE flag hits home - I don't use IPv6, nor do I want to have IPv6 support built into things (just another potential "thing" that I have to secure, or errors/warnings I need to suppress since I run an IPv6-less kernel).
If there needs to be a path to culling USE flags, perhaps looking to which flags actually cause packages to pull in additional dependencies (vs solely enable/disable a feature) would be a better place to start? ScottE