“I don't have any illusions about it being better than plain CSS in any way other than it saving some time and brain cycles here and there.”

Not contradicting you- just wanted to highlight this is a major benefit: when I have to do styling, saving me effort, time and “brain cycles” and just getting it out of the way so I can focus on “business logic” instead is almost the most important aspect (as long as the result isn’t terrible).

Maybe there are use cases where performance of web-styling is critical, but it certainly isn’t in mine.