Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig nerdson-site.com. NS
Answer
nerdson-site.com. 3 NS ns1.nerdson-site.com.
nerdson-site.com. 3 NS ns2.nerdson-site.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.nerdson-site.com. 3 A 149.56.130.74
ns2.nerdson-site.com. 3 A 15.235.97.235
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0