Thumbnail stray-cat audit

Reconstruction of paths previously rendered as the dare 404-page thumb (the 112 unique paths seen in the 5-day Cloudflare snapshot cache + today’s live fetch, HEAD-checked 2026-05-12).

Context: until 2026-05-12 the dashboard’s hover-preview thumbnail capture would screenshot the dare 404 template for any path that didn’t render (404, 5xx, or soft-404). 146 of 227 cached thumbs were byte-identical copies of that one image. Fix shipped today skips known-error sections, HEAD-checks each path, and rejects captures matching the 404-page fingerprint.

Live posts — read these (34)

These paths return 200 today. They were stray cats only because they 5xx’d at thumb-capture time (origin timeout or transient error). The dashboard will thumbnail them correctly on next refresh now that the HEAD precheck + fingerprint guard are in.

Status Path
200 /
200 /architecture/blobism/
200 /architecture/roof-top-beauties/
200 /cdn-cgi/challenge-platform/h/g/scripts/jsd/fe6331af5207/main.js
200 /cdn-cgi/speculation
200 /cinema/ray-and-charles-eames-film-shorts/
200 /contact
200 /culture-means-thriving-teams/
200 /culture-means-thriving-teams/archive/
200 /daring-acts/
200 /daring-acts/rune-hallum-sorensen/
200 /dmca-policy/
200 /fields-notes-from-business-design/
200 /fields-notes-from-business-design/archive/
200 /fine-arts/david-lynch/
200 /fine-arts/extrapolation-on-a-major-scale/
200 /fine-arts/woody-allen-and-jean-luc-godard/
200 /future-media/layers-that-reveal-past-present-future/
200 /future-media/zero-sum-freemium/
200 /industrial-design/jock-kinneir-and-margaret-calvert-1958-motorway-signs/
200 /methods-of-business-design/
200 /methods-of-business-design/archive/
200 /methods-of-business-design/describing-problem-spaces/
200 /observations/cairo/
200 /observations/google-tv/
200 /observations/greenpeace-climbing-oil-rig-to-shutdown-cairn-energy/
200 /observations/hawk-symbolism/
200 /observations/name-and-rank/
200 /observations/swedish-c130-pembrey-sands/
200 /observations/tilting-at-windmills/
200 /observations/volvo-backwards/
200 /photography/delhi/
200 /photography/nature/
200 /robots.txt

Redirects (7)

Mostly trailing-slash canonicalisation (/contact/contact/) or legacy URL handling. After the fix these are skipped by the HEAD check unless we extend it to follow redirects.

Status Path
302 /cdn-cgi/challenge-platform/scripts/jsd/main.js
307 /contact/
301 /contact/contact
307 /fields-notes-from-business-design/archive
307 /fine-arts/david-lynch
307 /methods-of-business-design/archive
301 /products/omega-seamaster-special-forces/

Dead — genuine 404 / 410 (30)

Paths Cloudflare logged but the origin doesn’t serve. Candidates for _redirects rules if the legitimate destination is obvious.

Status Path
404 /about/
404 /api/debug
404 /app/next.config.js
404 /appsettings.Production.json
404 /cdn-cgi/content
404 /cdn-cgi/rum
404 /cdn-cgi/trace
404 /cf-fonts/v/newsreader/5.0.16/latin/opsz/italic.woff2
404 /dare_ab_preview_archive_thumbnail_monochrome_2026-05-09
404 /dare_ab_preview_arrows_2026-05-09
404 /dare_gsc_audit_2026-05-08
404 /dare_narrative_2026-05-11
404 /dare_narrative_2026-05-11.html
404 /dare_s3_stray_promote_preview_2026-05-11
404 /dare_s3_stray_promote_preview_2026-05-11.html
404 /dare_s3_to_r2_promote_basename_2026-05-11
404 /dare_session_report_2026-05-11
404 /dare_session_report_2026-05-11.html
404 /favicon.ico
404 /insta-compose.yml
404 /notifications/*
404 /observations/
404 /posts/cropped-ziiiro-celeste.jpeg
404 /posts/nasa-earth-view.jpg
404 /posts/snapshot.jpg
404 /seo_pagerank_2026-05-08
404 /signup
404 /topics/digital-tv/
404 /visual-communications/
404 /webhook-waiting/*

Bot probes (40)

WordPress/admin/env-file scanners. No post to read; surfaces here for completeness because they were a big share of the 404-section noise.

Status Path
404 /1.php
404 /6xBAm3vODE05BSzkJZRAws.php
404 /8.php
404 /_next/image/
404 /aa.php
404 /abcd.php
404 /about.php
404 /admin
404 /autoload_classmap.php
404 /bnm.php
404 /buy.php
404 /classwithtostring.php
403 /config/.env
404 /deepseek_d.php
404 /default.php
404 /edit.php
404 /file.php
404 /goods.php
404 /index.php
404 /install.php
404 /ioxi-o.php
404 /item.php
404 /load.php
404 /log.php
404 /ng.php
404 /php-info.php
404 /phpi.php
404 /profile.php
404 /server-info.php
404 /sid3.php
404 /test.php
404 /web/config/common.js
404 /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamfree/img/wpsf-img.php
404 /wp-admin/index.php
404 /wp-blog-header.php
404 /wp-content/admin.php
404 /wp-content/plugins/cookie-law-info/public/images/logo-cookieyes.svg
404 /wp-includes/assets/ty.php
403 /wp-load.php
404 /wp-login.php

Other (server errors / unreachable) (1)

504 / 530 / DNS / timeout. Investigate if any are real pages — they’re the most likely soft-404 culprits.

Status Path
403 /web.config

Generated by /tmp/stray_cat_audit.py. Source data: ~/Downloads/dare_analytics_cache/paths_*.json + live Cloudflare GraphQL fetch. HEAD probe uses the browser UA from dare_cf_analytics._BROWSER_UA.

Source: dare_thumb_stray_cats_2026-05-12.md · Rendered 2026-05-12 08:18