Meh joke considering this was paid on public money.
Same as choosing to spend xxx,xxx USD to have .cern when using subdomains would have worked too (and caused less validation / compatibility issues).
As a tax payer in one of the member states, I approve of this joke.
The Web is a side project of CERN, they should have gotten a comped top-level domain by rights.
They got the intern to write a funny post. Probably took them an hour and it drums up a bit of good press for the Hi-Lumi LHC.
Money well spent if you ask me.