As an update: it's still bloatware and moreso than I originally thought.
I accessed the "no-dark-theme" version. As in the previous article, it is much lighter and came in at 380Kb. But, and this is a big but, it does not match the functionality of version 0.9.4. All of the Helper functions are also stripped out of this "no-dark-theme" version.
I opened up the full version of v1.0.0 and copy/pasted the helper portion to the "no-dark-theme" version and it worked pretty much as I expected. But bloat ... wow. This new hybrid version should have all the functionality of v1.0.0 but without the dark theme. I think it does, but it comes in at a whopping 522Kb MINIFIED.
Quite frankly, I think this Bulma v1.0.0 is designed for large websites that need the power (or flexibility) of SASS. It's not for me.