Please stay on topic Rab...
Ships "floating above the horizon with bits apparently missing" is not the exception, or the rare occurrence, it is the rule.
Have you considered that the composition of the air closer to the water will have a different refractive index than the composition even 20 ft higher. I don't think refraction is something to all of a sudden abandon when it comes to explaining why things look distorted or strange. It's fine when you want to use it to calculate the sun's actual position, as opposed to its apparent position. The "squishing" effect is linear, not exponential as you would expect on an object going over a curve.
Also, as far as the sunset goes, you've shown photographic evidence of large objects like mountains and cities being perceived beyond the apparent horizon, as you've made it clear that the horizon is not the vanishing point. So would you not expect to see an object as massive as the sun still being visible, apparently, beyond the horizon.
I do not agree that "Ships "floating above the horizon with bits apparently missing" is not the exception, or the rare occurrence, it is the rule."
It is only the rule it photos and videos intended to prop up the Flat Earth explanations.
Have it your own way, but what do you mean by "exponential as you would expect on an object going over a curve." There is no "exponential" anywhere in connection with the sun disappearing behind the horizon.
No, as you say you do "not expect to see an object as massive as the sun still being visible, apparently, beyond the horizon."
but then why does TFES insist that it is!
The Setting of the Sun
Although the sun is at all times above the earth's surface, it appears in the morning to ascend from the north-east to the noonday position, and thence to descend and disappear, or set, in the north-west.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Once the lower part of the Sun meets the horizon line, however, it will intersect with the vanishing point and become lost to human perception as the sun's increasingly shallow path creates a tangent beyond the resolution of the human eye. The vanishing point is created when the perspective lines are angled less than one minute of a degree. Hence, this effectively places the vanishing point a finite distance away from the observer.
To me, this clearly states that the sun disappears when it meets "with the vanishing point and become lost to human perception".
And then it says "The vanishing point is created when the perspective lines are angled less than one minute of a degree." Those two statements are quite in conflict as far as I can see.
But this explanation implies that the sun gets progressively small as it moves across the sky to finally set, but
the sun does not do that!
The at sunset the sun is supposedly still around 5,000 km above the earth and, while the distance varies, the sun can be around 15,000 km from the observer.
That means that the sun is still around 18° above the horizon. No amount of perspective can alter that.
So, just
how does your sun manage to get down to the horizon? - and don't come up with analogies of birds and 'planes, they are nothing like 5,000 km high!
Then there another massive problem for the Flat Earth sun. Just how does in manage to rise almost in the South East here in summer - today it rose at about 117° here, and I'm not far south. But the Flat Earth sun, at the time of sunrise here (4.47 AM EAST), would be way to the North?
And how do you explain sunrise and sunset times being so predictable when the sun disappears due to reasons . . . . . . . .
Carry on guessing!