Andrew Johnson

@a-johnson.bsky.social

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A Rust function called pale_fire() that uses language-level mechanics as literary criticism of Nabokov's Pale Fire. A mutable vector called 'shade' is filled with fragments of the poem's opening line, cloned into a variable called 'poem' that is never used again. Inside a block called 'second_canto', the variable 'maud' is annotated with #[allow(dead_code)], while '_hazel' is assigned without ever being declared — producing a compiler error shown at the bottom of the file, where the compiler suggests she be properly introduced or removed. A move closure called 'kinbote' captures shade by value, shadows a variable called 'me' three times from 'a scholar' to 'an exile' to 'Charles Xavier Vseslav, the Beloved', then spawns a thread where Charles journeys through places named in a macro called zembla!() that always expands to 'English, rearranged'. The thread is never joined. The closure is never called. The poem is never read.
Meme from I Think You Should Leave's "Focus Group" sketch, reading: "A good stainless steel panels that don't fly off while you're driving"