In my experience, most people do not want to engage at all, or are fixated on peddling their specific fantasy.
I am certainly not innocent of trying to get attention to my ideas, but to me a valid idea must be true in all cases and all scales. Therefore, good theories should overlap with or be compatible with others. I have abandoned my theories at times only to find that observational data most scientists intentionally misinterpret to shore up their theories better supported mine. I can elaborate on that some time if you would like.
On Einstein and Gravity, I believe Einstein's math for the majority of cases sufficiently describes the behavior. I also believe that his geodesic explanation of gravity is absolutely correct and vastly misunderstood. I have spent years considering the cart/horse orientation of gravity/time dilation, and in agreement with old Al, gravity is the effect, not the cause.
I detail this in the following article, 'though it is part 4 so I recommend the other 3 parts to see the custody of evidence.
I think the strongest point where our processes differ is that I DO have a problem with 'c' being the arbitrary fastest speed. Mostly because it is contradicted in so many ways (I can list sometime if you would like).
Where I don't agree with Einstein is that he preferred to describe everything as being at 1 speed (c) and it is the alteration of the shape of the medium that affects its movement.
That being said, time dilation (in my conclusion, a force carrying boson which results in the phenomenon of gravity) seems to only have one function: Speed limiting particles.
What I believe observation shows is that everything that exists is speed unlimited, but standard model particles (all that we can directly observe) radiate a field that moves at 'c'.
Again, I do not disagree with your assertations so much as our process is different.
I feel like I'm in the weeds, but your silver sliver tank example is a great analog for why we experience gravity! What happens to the slivers is that the slower moving part of water creates an uneven drag on the silver sliver which causes it to be drawn towards it. Time dilation radiating from a mass has a similar drag slope causing the portion of another mass or wavefront to have an uneven drag.
Now, remember that all fundamental particles are moving at their maximum speed at all times. Therefore, all masses in an uneven field of time dilation will experience drag. The quarks closer to the larger mass will recede at a smaller velocity causing the more distant ones to rebound their momentum towards the mass. Even with single particles, the wavefront of a particle in motion experiences this uneven drag (lensing).
Einstein was lukewarm on quantum mechanics, so he would not consider wavelength as a factor, but modern observations clearly show time dilation has less influence on upper gamma propagation and neutrinos than on lower frequencies/lower energy particles. This disproves spacetime/exotic manifolds, supports wave/particle duality, and particle-based time dilation. I can elaborate/support this further if you are interested.
To elaborate, what you call a dead zone that causes drag, I have a particle field inducing drag. Your dead zone is devoid of standard model matter, where my particle is outside of the standard model as well. In both cases, we are saying that the trajectory of mass in motion is affected by this property, and we agree spacetime manifold does not adequately describe it.
Therefore, I believe we are buttering the same slice of toast simply from opposite perspectives. 😆
If you've had patience for me thus far, here is the payout. Although "matter has more behaviors than just gravitational", it is the behavior that all standard model particles DO have in common. This is the crux of my Dilation Flooding theory which drastically simplifies the cause of observed redshift. And since redshift measurements show a linear trend for as far as we can measure it, we CAN "have a full-gravitational review of matter in the universe".
By breaking down redshift values to their dilation equivalent values (they are acceleration based under Hubble flow), and applying the trend theory I've outlined, we can determine the standard model density of the universe!
This is an exercise I have yet to perform due to lack of time to this point. Here is the basic support for the computation:
https://whetscience.medium.com/mathematic-support-of-dilation-flooding-effect-c369b6728b13
