&gt; In fact, I think it’s confusing to call them variables at  all. They’re actually CSS properties, which gives them an entirely different set of capabilities and allows them to solve an entirely different set of problems.<p>I think this is the problem people have with them - they don&#x27;t try to be a good solution to the problem people actually have. A better designed solution would have the most common case simple and elegant, and more esoteric use-cases, like the ones they are trying to solve, may have esoteric solutions like the proposed one.