Suppose we have a Box type:

data class Box<T>(val thing: T)

And a class that composes a thing of type T and a 
Jackson TypeReference for its boxed type:

data class ThingAndBoxedTypeRef<T>(
    val thing: T,
    val typeRef: TypeReference<Box<T>>
) {
    companion object {
        inline fun <reified T> of(thing: T) = 
			ThingAndBoxedTypeRef(thing, jacksonTypeRef())
    }
}

To save you looking it up, jacksonTypeRef is just this:

inline fun <reified T> jacksonTypeRef(): TypeReference<T> = 
	object: TypeReference<T>() {}

Given that, constructing the composite type directly 
(with the explicit jacksonTypeRef() call) works great:

println(ThingAndBoxedTypeRef("another string", jacksonTypeRef()).typeRef.type)
// prints: com.foo.Box<java.lang.String>

But using the `.of()` helper does not:
println(ThingAndBoxedTypeRef.of("a string").typeRef.type)
/ prints: com.foo.Box<T>

Why is this?