I don't agree with this. CSS is a warty tool with a mixed background, but modern CSS is pretty effective and pleasant to use, especially when combined with a preprocessor.
A broken box model
The W3C box is counter-intuitive, but bear in mind that nobody really expected CSS to be used for layout at the point it was initially selected, so I doubt it was considered that important. And in any case, it's fixed now, with box-sizing supported by like 98% of browsers globally.
Centering things? You have to use hacks even for this simple purpose.
No you don't. There are well-documented, consistent ways to centre in CSS. Vertical entering used to be difficult (for obvious reasons), but now we've got flexbox which solves that problem entirely.
Building grids? Let's have fun and pick the one you prefer
These all do different things and have different characteristics – so you can pick the one that most suited.
Qo we got offered the option to emulate html tables in CSS.
Not quite – we got the ability to build visually-table-like things that use table layout rules, but separated them from the semantic implication of tables. That's a good thing.
They added CSS animations. What animations have to do with styling and layout?
Animations are just the time axis of layout. It makes much more sense to define them and the transitions between them declaratively using CSS.
Etc, etc, etc. CSS is just a complete mess.
In contrast, I find that CSS is mostly a bit of a scapegoat. Sure, it's taken a while to become a comprehensive layout and styling tool – but combined with something like SASS, I absolutely love writing CSS.