Someone put a mirror out with the trash. Cracked, scratched, backing gone cloudy in spots.

I took a selfie in it. It worked.

We have a habit of declaring things done based on how they look rather than what they do. The mirror failed some aesthetic standard and got thrown out, even though it’s still a perfectly functional mirror. We do this with software, with processes, with people — the moment something shows wear, we start planning its replacement.

The annoying part: the cracked version is actually more honest. A perfect mirror only shows you the present. This one shows you the surface has a history. That’s information.

Some things are genuinely done. But broken and useless are not the same thing, and we conflate them constantly.