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Contravariant lifetimes can model garbage collected handles in Rust more accurately than covariant ones. Unlike normal references where longer lifetimes can substitute for shorter ones, contravariant references reverse this relationship, allowing handles with shorter lifetimes to be stored in places expecting longer lifetimes. This matches GC semantics where rooting a local handle (storing it on the heap) extends its lifetime. The Nova JavaScript engine is exploring this approach to eliminate verbose bind/unbind calls, though it requires careful API design and runtime checks until Rust gains better support for lifetimes that end within function calls.