Thank you. That article was begging for a TLDR. The cooking blog effect but for science.

The GIF doesn't explain anything the article is about except that Venus orbits closer and faster than Earth. But that's just a little background for the article.

Here are relative orbital positions by month: https://www.theplanetstoday.com/

Indeed. I found all that guff about race-tracks and flags awfully confusing. Don't use metaphors, if a simple statement of the facts would do the trick.

I used to have a subscription to SciAm, but I cancelled it 30 years ago (partly because Martin Gardner stopped writing for them).