I Have a Few Questions

Before I start, Happy Indigenous People’s Day! Let's have a big standing O for Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the Secretary of the Interior. Also Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk and Kansas House Rep) and Mary Peltola (Yup'ik and Alaska House Rep)—major applause.

A tidbit about Deb Haaland—she was born in the town the Eagles made famous—Winslow, Arizona.

Questions though—my first is about Jupiter’s Red Spot.

At 10,000 miles across, the Great Red Spot is the largest storm in our solar system and has been continually observed for around 200 years, but it's been around for much longer.

How do scientists know it’s a storm?

NASA's Juno mission launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida back in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016. In 2019, the spacecraft changed course slightly and passed over the Great Red Spot twice.

Bolton and his team used microwave sensors to slice into the depths of the storm, getting the first 3D model of the Great Red Spot. "It's a pancake, because it's so wide at the top. But the depth of that pancake is much thicker than what we would have anticipated.” (source)

Okay, got it. The Red Spot is a microwavable pancake of a storm. I’m hip, I’m hip. The Red Spot is also about one and a quarter times the diameter of Earth. That’s one ultra massive crêpe, mes amis!

Question two—did the word moron come from the apocryphal Mormon Angel Moroni? 

Moron
     noun
A stupid person; e.g., Lauren Boobert, Matt Sex Trafficking Gaetz, Madison Cousin-Fucker Cawthorn, Marjorie Trailer Trash Greene, Paul KKK Gosar, Lunatic Gohmert, etc.

The etymology of moron?

1910, medical Latin, "one of the highest class of feeble-minded persons," from Greek (Attic) mōron, neuter of mōros "foolish, dull, sluggish, stupid," a word of uncertain origin.
~~~
Adopted by the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded with a technical definition "adult with a mental age between 8 and 12;" used as an insult since 1922 and subsequently dropped from technical use. (source) 

Joseph Smith started the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints AKA the Mormon cult, sometime in the 1820s. Hmmmmmmmm.

It appears that Joseph Smith’s fairy tale Angel Moroni came first. I believe it's entirely reasonable to connect the dots from Moroni to moron.

I only mention it…

The rest of my questions, so far today, come to me via xkcd.