Nicholas Nethercote
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Nicholas Nethercote
@nnethercote.bsky.social
290 followers 31 following 330 posts
he/him (or they/them)
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Sometimes a famous person dies and there is a unanimous flood of stories about what a wonderful person they were. Robert Redford and Sam Neill are two recent examples that come to mind, but Dolly Parton is blowing the doors off. Requiescat in pace.
August 25, 2026 at 11:28 PM
New blog post: How to speed up the Rust compiler in July 2026

nnethercote.github.io/2026/07/31/h...
How to speed up the Rust compiler in July 2026
My last post on the Rust compiler’s performance was in December 2025. Let’s see what has happened since then.
nnethercote.github.io
July 31, 2026 at 3:25 AM
The history of air pollution science is just "the health impact is even worse than we thought" over and over again.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Replacing gas stove can help asthmatics as much as some drugs, US experts find
Team in Ohio finds swapping to electric has ‘very large’ impact, despite study being scaled back by Trump cuts
www.theguardian.com
July 25, 2026 at 12:01 AM
once again
Odysseus and his men
clambering back into their boats
after getting their asses kicked
July 19, 2026 at 10:03 AM
it's spelled "faze"
July 18, 2026 at 12:21 PM
my chance of distinguishing "what a fantastic tackle" from "obvious foul from the defender" is well under 50%
July 16, 2026 at 3:24 AM
Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy is funny and beautiful and weird and sometimes it punches you in the stomach
How did I become a person who almost never left the house? Until I was twelve I lived as an element of nature, tending to my untamed Rooms, wading through creeks and waist-high grasses, and bicycling diagonally across vacant lots long after the sun had flamed down. All the while I collected: unsplit geodes with their lunar skins, horn corals with mushroom frills at the top, shivered green glass and grocery lists and bottle caps not yet flattened into the second dimension. Collecting was a mad instinct to own the world. If I had to go inside at all, I wanted to bring the whole outdoors with me and hold my own context in my hand. Then, when we moved to the neighbourhood in St. Louis that was piece by piece being lifted into the sky, where girls were in danger and no one played after dark, the most curious thing happened: I felt the slow clank of a metal shutter coming down, being lowered by some unseen hand until there was only a stripe of light underneath, and that was the news from outside. I was thirteen, and it was beyond my strength to raise it again. How to go back: to that diagonal flight across fields, that confident pocketing of everything I surveyed? How to remember that easy, bone-deep assumption that the world is for you too? I know all women are supposed to be strong enough now to strangle presidents and patriarchies between their powerful thighs, but it doesn't work that way. Many of us were actually affected, by male systems and male anger, in ways we cannot always articulate or overcome. Sometimes, when the ceiling seems especially low and the past especially close, I think to myself, I did not make it out. I am still there in that place of diminishment, where that voice an octave deeper than mine is telling me what I am. Before I turned thirteen, I had never been part of the class that my father called empty-headed and addressed as "dollface," that our church seemed to see as just bodies. I was simply myself, unique and irreducible. Suddenly I became female, and it was as if a telescope I had been looking through—with a clear eye, up at an unbounded night of stars—had been viciously turned on me. I went to a pinpoint. Does God exist was never a question for me then; do I exist took up the whole of my mind. I did not make it out, but this does. Art goes outside, even if we don't; it fills the whole air, though we cannot raise our voices. This is the secret: when I encounter myself on the page, I am shocked at how forceful I seem. On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength. On the page I am everything that I am not, because that is where I put myself. I am no longer whispering through the small skirted shape of a keyhole: the door is knocked down and the roof is blown off and I am aimed once more at the entire wide night.
June 27, 2026 at 5:24 AM
whoa

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ot...
New York Vocal Collective - Blackbird
YouTube video by NYVC (New York Vocal Collective)
www.youtube.com
June 22, 2026 at 10:53 AM
Search for "sbs world cup highlights" on YouTube for high-quality, filler-free, spoiler-free, three minute highlight packages of each World Cup match from SBS Australia.
June 21, 2026 at 10:46 PM
I just rewatched season 1 of Andor for the fourth time. It's my favourite TV show.

It's not just another Star Wars show. There are no Jedi, no Skywalkers, no lightsabers, and no Force. It's just rebels and Empire. Everything has depth and weight. Everything feels real.
June 17, 2026 at 10:13 AM
tremendous "graphic design is my passion" energy here

(names obscured to protect the guilty)
A sign advertising a business doing "Interior Design for Residential & Commercial". The sign has black cursive text. The company name and URL are obscured via crude black lines added with image editing software. The hideous background has wide blue and green vertical stripes with thin white stripes between them.
May 13, 2026 at 1:48 AM
You can ignore politicians and just visit www.ishormuzopenyet.com every once in a while. Saves time and you'll be better informed.
Is Hormuz Open Yet?
Live status of the Strait of Hormuz
www.ishormuzopenyet.com
April 18, 2026 at 11:28 PM
wish I'd never heard the phrase "wet signature"
March 11, 2026 at 1:24 AM
This story is fucking nuts

theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…
theshamblog.com
February 12, 2026 at 10:37 PM
I finally 100%'d Silksong, phew
December 20, 2025 at 10:27 PM
nnethercote.github.io/2025/12/05/h...
How to speed up the Rust compiler in December 2025
It has been more than six months since my last post on the Rust compiler’s performance. In that time I lost one job and gained another. I have less time to work directly on the Rust compiler than I us...
nnethercote.github.io
December 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM
In microwave timer logic 99 > 100, because 99 = 139
October 17, 2025 at 1:57 AM
My new job

nnethercote.github.io/2025/09/16/m...
My new job
I am happy to announce that I have joined a new startup called VectorWare. The linked website is currently very bare-boned, but the company aims to use Rust to improve the state of GPU programming.
nnethercote.github.io
September 15, 2025 at 10:26 PM
New blog post: Faster Rust builds on Mac

nnethercote.github.io/2025/09/04/f...
Faster Rust builds on Mac
Did you know that macOS has a secret setting that can make Rust builds faster? It can also make Rust tests faster. It probably even has similar effects for other compiled languages such as C, C++, Go,...
nnethercote.github.io
September 4, 2025 at 5:55 AM
New blog post: Speed wins when fuzzing Rust code with `#[derive(Arbitrary)]`

nnethercote.github.io/2025/08/16/s...
Speed wins when fuzzing Rust code with #[derive(Arbitrary)]
If you are using #[derive(Arbitrary)] to fuzz your Rust code, update the Arbitrary crate to v1.4.2 to get some compile time reductions and possibly some fuzzing speed improvements.
nnethercote.github.io
August 16, 2025 at 5:52 AM
New blog post: I am a Rust compiler engineer looking for a new job

nnethercote.github.io/2025/07/18/l...
I am a Rust compiler engineer looking for a new job
For the past 3.75 years I have been fortunate to work on Futurewei’s Rust team, where I had enormous freedom to “make Rust better” however I see fit. It has been the highlight of my career and I am gr...
nnethercote.github.io
July 18, 2025 at 4:33 AM
New blog post: How much code does that proc macro generate?

nnethercote.github.io/2025/06/26/h...
How much code does that proc macro generate?
Rust’s proc macros are powerful but tricky, and have some compile-time costs. This post is about a new tool to help quantify and reduce some of those costs.
nnethercote.github.io
June 26, 2025 at 5:43 AM
CHOCOLATE: you are two of my oldest, dearest friends, and I think you are gonna get along great

PEANUT BUTTER: uh

MINT: *cough*
May 31, 2025 at 4:26 AM
New blog post: nnethercote.github.io/2025/04/08/a...
A home free from fossil fuels
My house is now free from the direct burning of fossil fuels. Here’s how I did it.
nnethercote.github.io
April 7, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Island A: everyone gets 2000 calories a day

Island B: you and your friends get 1600 calories a day and everyone else gets 1200

so many people would pick Island B without hesitation
April 5, 2025 at 12:46 AM