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Are you suggesting Yahweh designed our eyes wrong?

It kind of is faster in one direction than in another. It's called a jet stream, as I'm sure you know, and I think, according to the model, it's the result of the Coriolis Effect, which is the result of spinning.

The historical arguments I was referring to were Aristotle's and Eratosthenes'.

Neither optical nor digital zooming can bring an object below the horizon back into view. If zooming brings an object back into view, it wasn't beneath the horizon. If this were possible, then celestial objects that go beneath the horizon completely could also be brought back into view with zooming, and this hasn't been demonstrated.

Gravity is a puzzle regardless of the shape of the earth; the lack of satisfaction we have with gravitational theories is not evidence for flat earth. At least, I'd want to hear an argument why it is evidence that supports the flat earth hypothesis.

Gravity under general relativity refers to curvature of space-time, not to force at a distance. Earth curves the space around it, which explains the orbit of the moon. For X to be caught in the orbit of Y means X is being accelerated through the curved space around Y. If the moon did not have the mass and angular velocity it has, it wouldn't be orbiting at all; it would crash into earth. A moth, by contrast, is also being accelerated toward the earth at a much more perpendicular vector, which is why its wings have to provide the distinct sort of lift they do. The moth would be on the ground if it were not exerting a force capable of overcoming the acceleration due to gravity the moth experiences, which because of its very small mass, is less than that of the moon by orders of magnitude. You can still appreciate that the moon is doing something very different from what the moth is doing. The moth is quite close to earth, after all. If you imagined a giant cosmic hand flicking planet earth out of its orbit very quickly, the position of the moth is going to be a lot easier to predict than the moon's.

Regarding the objects hovering or flying through earth's atmosphere, you aren't modelling the system correctly. When I point this out to you, you're going to realize how obvious it is. An object in motion remains in motion unless acted on by an outside force. If the helicopter is on earth's surface moving at roughly 1,000 mph, then when its blades begin to spin, generating an area of higher air pressure beneath them, the lift exerted on the blades will raise the helicopter upward. It doesn't need to be attached to the ground to be moving at 1,000 mph. It will continue to move with the same velocity because there is no external force in its reference frame that is resisting it. Intuitively, you think there is air resistance, but that assumes the earth in its own motion is 'slipping' past the atmopshere at 1,000 mph. No, the atmosphere is also rotating at that velocity as an entire mass (there is a lot of variation that occurs due to meteorological phenomena, which would introduce complexity way above my paygrade, but this isn't necessary to see the point being made). The atmosphere is not a steady shell surrounding a moving globe. It is moving with the globe. So, the helicopter can hover and manage to remain over the same point on land because the whole system is moving. The helicopter just moved upward because of the force exerted by the air beneath its blades. The fact that the whole system, including the atmosphere, is moving is the reason we can make sense of the motion of individual things on land, i.e., for you and me, the 'background' is a stable reference frame. That is, the earth-atmosphere system is at rest relative to our motion on its surface. Of course, if there is a strong wind, that's going to change how the helicopter must counteract the lateral forces in order to maintain its position.

If I'm not mistaken, the principle that explains the motion of the atmosphere (taken as a whole mass) caused by the planet's rotation is called laminar friction (or something like that). Basically, based on density gradients, earth's atmosphere consists of various layers. If you were to begin the earth rotating from rest (with its current atmosphere), the layers closest to earth would begin moving first as they are dragged by literal surface features like mountains and forests. Those lower layers will begin to exert a drag on the layer above them, so on and so forth, until an equilibrium is reached, which is the roughly 1,000 mph figure for the whole system (the atmosphere influences that velocity; the earth would spin at a different speed if it didn't have the atmosphere).

Finally, let's address the air travel thing (this is usually questioned in the context of planes). Suppose you're looking at a globe spinning clockwise, and you're viewing it along its equator. That means the planet and the atmosphere, from your view, will be moving in a westerly direction (toward your left side). Now imagine a plane somewhere along that equator lifting off and hovering for a moment above a point on land called X. You are now standing on X.

In absolute terms, if the plane just hovers, it has a vector of 1,000 mph in the westerly direction. It has that just in virtue of being an earth-bound thing. But from your perspective, which is in the same reference frame, the velocity of the plane is 0. Now, if you observe that playing flying away in the westerly direction at 500 mph, you can think of this as 0 + 500. Relative to the X below the plane, the plane will be moving at 500.

But what about if the plane flies in the easterly direction. Well, now you have to think about the land that is moving beneath it. That land is moving at 1,000 in the westerly direction, while the plane is flying 500 mph in the easterly direction. 1000 (westerly movement of land) - 500 (easterly movement of plane) = a final vector for the plane of 500 mph in the easterly direction.

A different way of thinking about this is in terms of two positions. Say the plane hovers above some X, and it is going to fly in the westerly direction toward some Y at a different point on earth (Y is west of X). Call the moment that the plane is hovering over X time zero (t = o). At t = 0, Y is some distance D from X, and say D = 1,000 miles. If the plane did nothing at all except hovered, it would travel D in one hour. That is, while the plane wouldn't have moved relative to the planet, the plane would have covered the distance between X and Y in one hour just by hovering. In order for the plane to actually get to Y, it has to accelerate so that its vector in the westerly direction increases above 1,000, or it won't ever get to Y. So if it travels 500 mph relative to X, it will reach Y in 2 hours.

Now, let's do the same thing in the opposite direction of the earth's spin, i.e., the plane will fly toward a new location Z in the easterly direction. Again, Z is 1,000 miles east of X. If the plan accelerates to 500 mph, then its new vector will be 1000 - 500, since it is now changing its original 1000mph-west vector by accelerating to 500 mph in the opposite direction.

Here's the crux (what is so confusing for people). You and the plane both begin with the 1000mph-west vector. If the plane travels west at 500 mph, that's an absolute vector of 1500mph-west (1000 + 500). If the plane travel 500 mph east, that's an absolute vector of 500 mph-east (1000 - 500). The 1000's cancel, and so we get the intuitive result that it doesn't matter whether the plane travels 500 mph east or west from your location...it'll appear the same to you.

I realize thinking in this way can be a bit confusing. It helps if you draw the system on paper including the vectors. I think it makes more sense that way.

But everything that I just said about the plane is also the reason why you can jump and land in the same spot, rather than the earth slipping past you. If you jump straight up in the air, your horizontal vector hasn't changed. You stay moving at 1,000 mph right along with the earth. But if you want to jump five feet to your left, you have to accelerate your body in a horizontal direction. But you can jump the same distance to your left or your right without any change in effort.

EDIT: As @vitaminsieg pointed out, there are other effects in play. The Coriolis effect does make planes flying in one direction move faster, all else being equal. My example ignored this effect to make a more general point.

So, I think you raise some interesting points. I'm a denier of the moon landing, by the way.

This is my point about skepticism though, and that's why I used that word in the first sentence of my original comment. Denying one story is not equivalent with accepting another. I'm very much for being skeptical where it is appropriate. I'm very much against jumping from one ship to another because we're afraid to swim. Absolutely, I think we should resist proclamations and policies predicated on false stories (e.g., climate change). It can be dangerous to fall into the trap of the dialectic, however.

The nature of the dialectic means that, if a thesis X has an antithesis Y, the powers that be can control both X and Y. And getting caught in that conflict is often precisely what they intend to happen.

I'm much more of a 'get out of the cave' guy. If we are right that the commonest story we're told about space and our cosmos is a kind of myth, we need to be clear about the difference between evidence that rebuts the myth and evidence that affirms the antithesis. We shouldn't leap from "they've lied to us about space" to "the earth is flat."

Is the earth flat? Maybe. I don't know. I have a certain level of confidence that it isn't, but it's not 100%. For me, 100% confidence is an extremely high water mark.

I'm paying a lot more attention to what people tell me that means I must do, no matter what shape they're telling me the planet is.

Bruce Anderson sounds like he is full of shit. His intro to the story sounds contrived.

100,000 or more commercial pilots. Everyone knows that flight crews are full of sexual degenerates, drunks and pillpoppers and none of them except a few ever had a lapse? If Flat Earth was true, there would be at least like 20K unofficial testimonies in bars and hotel rooms around the world. You're really a dumb motherfucker. You don't think a faggot like Gaetan Dugass would be picking up young men and giving them AIDS while using this "big secret" as a lure? Or some pilot like the one Denzel Washington played all hopped up on coke and booze fucking foreign whores and then being so wasted he could barely fly...do you think someone like that would make a good proprietor of an illuminati secret? 3 guys can't even kill someone in a burglary without ratting each other out and I'm supposed to believe that 100K faggots, punks and alcoholics kept their mouths shut for 70 years of commercial aviation?