@steelybob
You can prove it's the sun and moon causing it by comparing the tide times with the solar and lunar positions - the relationship is obvious.
I was taught that too. Since scrutinizing and researching the claim more thoroughly (than the commonplace blind acceptance and repetition lamentably required by conditioning through rote under the guise of education), I have found it to be false.
There is no connection to the moon, sun, or any other light in the sky. The tides frequencies, amplitudes, and tidal node locations (which are fixed) are wholly incompatible with newton's old assumption.
Turns out the moon is not a god which holds sway over the oceans. That was just particularly stupid mythology, like virtually all of astronomy/cosmology.
There is a small, but measurable slope across the water. If that slope can exist, why can't water also adopt a curved shape?
No one said it couldn't! Water (fluids) can be any shape. But its surface only has one at rest (of non-miniscule surface area / volume, and under natural conditions - obviously).
I should be clear; the contention is not that fields/forces (such as electrical / magnetic) cannot be used to cause the sustained convex curvature of water's surface (required for the globe model) against its demonstrable natural behavior - it is that no such forces exist in reality to do the job (and they would be exhausted quickly, because it is very costly to perpetually prevent natural law/behavior). The tides are instances of water pooling/shoaling/moving periodically for reasons we do not understand, and are not tugged by invisible strings attached to the sun and moon (and everything else in conceivable reality) which continue to defy explanation, discovery/measurement, rigorous definition, and generally demonstrable reality.
I suppose I have to ask: what would it take to persuade you that you're wrong?
An important question, that is valuable we all explore and understand/keep fresh our answer(s) to. In this case, speaking specifically about the curvature of water's surface at rest (not the shape of the whole world, which is another kettle of fish), the answer is science!
This point is all to do with scientific law. Scientific law is established through rigorous and repeated measurement alone. It can ONLY be refuted by rigorous and repeated measurement to the contrary.
All measurements that exist of water's surface at rest are flat, level, and horizontal. That is HOW/WHAT the natural law of hydrostatics is. This law has stood unchallenged for centuries (perhaps longer), but what is needed to overturn it is inarguable/explicit by the basic definitions of science (and scientific law of which it is in part comprised).
If you're curious to know more, and willing to change your view on new evidence, then read on.
Always, i hope!
Set them wrong and you'll make it considerably worse.
True, though this would be the same with a drift nut that only accommodates the mechanical frictions of the gyro as well. I may come around on this point, as I do not doubt that the reality of the deflections (varying apparently by latitude) of gyroscopes, pendulums etc.
I'm curious to know what you think is the cause of the coriolis effect
The coriolis effect is a "pseudo-effect" that very few people I have encountered understand properly (due to commonplace miseducation). ACTUAL deflection, caused in gyroscopes and pendulums, is NOT coriolis. Coriolis ONLY occurs when there is a separate reference frame which is in relative motion which merely APPEARS to create deflection. Like the wiki said, it doesn't really exist in the popularly understood way.
I expect you are really asking about the real/actual (not apparent/illusion caused by reference frame) measured deflection, for which the drift nut is needed to compensate (potentially anyhow). Personally, I am an aetherist. I recognize that light is a pressure wave in a medium, and that medium is called aether. It is a very fine fluid, and it permeates all of reality. Even if you could somehow force all the matter we recognize out of a volume, the fine fluid would (and does) remain. It is my suspicion that the aether is in motion, swirling around us and that this motion very subtly affects/interacts with matter in its turbulence.
FET offers no explanation for any of that - doesn't that make you doubt your FET thinking on some level?
In my view, FET doesn't even exist. Theory, in a scientific context, does not exist for "flat earth" nor could the shape of the world ever be a theory.
Flat earth research is not really about offering explanation. Indeed, recognizing/concluding/speculating that the world is flat both answers a question no one asked, and creates mountains more - many of which we thought we'd already answered. There is nothing wrong with lacking explanation, that is how we always live our lives and must. The honest answer to most all questions is "we don't know".
I agree that observational and - most especially - experimental evidence must be reconciled at some point with the new revelation (perhaps) that the earth is not spherical - the fact that we have trouble doing so and have many "impossible contradictions" and "lack of explanations" today is unsurprising. Scientific revolution always goes this way.
I should be clear, if I haven't already, that I am a "globe-skeptic"/"globe denier" not a "flat earther" (if such a thing there be). We lack the verified and verifiable data to make a determination as to the shape of the entire world, but I have concluded that it is not, and most likely cannot be, spherical.