Histogram: You have to know the past to understand the present by Tomas Petricek, University of Kent

Programs are created through a variety of interactions. A programmer might write some code, run it interactively to check whether it works, use copy and paste, apply a refactoring or choose an item from an auto-complete list. Programming research often forgets about these and represents programs as the resulting text. Consequently, thinking about such interactions is often out of scope. This essay shifts focus from programs to a more interesting question of programming.

We represent programs as lists of interactions such as triggering an auto-complete and choosing an option, declaring a value, introducing a variable or evaluating a piece of code. We explore a number of consequences of this way of thinking about programs. First, if we create functions by writing concrete code using a sample input and applying a refactoring, we do not lose the sample input and can use it later for debugging. Second, if we treat executing code interactively as an interaction and store the results, we can later use this information to give more precise suggestions in auto-complete. Third, by moving away from a textual representation, we can display the same program as text, but also in a view inspired by spreadsheets. Fourth, we can let programmers create programs by directly interacting with live previews as those interactions can be recorded and as a part of program history.

We discuss the key ideas through examples in a simple programming environment for data exploration. Our focus in this essay is more on principles than on providing fine tuned user experience. We keep our environment more explicit, especially when this reveals what is happening behind the scenes. We aim to show that seeing programs as lists of interactions is a powerful change of perspective that can help us build better programming systems with novel features that make programming easier and more accessible. The data exploration environment in this interactive essay may not yet be that, but it gives a glimpse of the future.

When Queens Becomes Kings (Tiger King)

The hysteria around the Netflix show "Tiger King" has been very eyeopening. What is it about this low-rent animal abuser has Jared Leto, Cardi B, and the many other celebrities peacocking their obsessions with his unforgivable shenanigans?

I Mean…What?!?

Why Do The Good Die Young?

I thought back to the summer when I was eleven years old, after my father had discovered making money and had moved us “on up” from the dregs of Weehawken, New Jersey, situated on the ass end of the Lincoln Tunnel to the posh suburb, Englewood Cliffs just north of the George Washington Bridge.

I Mean…What?!?

You Know You’re Gay When…

YOU KNOW YOU'RE GAY WHEN...
You know what color chartreuse is.
You have used chartreuse in a sentence.
You wear chartreuse.

I Mean…What?!?

Hollywood and Brine

One thing is getting to Hollywood; the other is staying here. You can’t just stay here in the hopes of becoming a celebrity and take a job at a bank or some other menial office job in the Valley. Heaven forbid.

I Mean…What?!?

1. Viroloog Marion Koopmans: 'Als het misgaat, hebben we echt een megaprobleem'  AD.nl
2. Ook Nederlandse viroloog verwacht tweede coronagolf | Buitenland | Nieuws  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. Viroloog: “Nieuwe coronagolf verwacht, alles staat of valt met hoe we ons gedragen”  Oog TV
4. BLIJF BANG! Viroloog Marion Koopmans waarschuwt: 'Die tweede coronavirus-golf komt er'  De Dagelijkse Standaard
5. Viroloog: 'Er komt een tweede coronagolf die mogelijk nog krachtiger is dan de eerste'  ThePostOnline
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Antilichamen in uw bloed zijn geen belofte dat u veilig bent  Het Belang van LimburgHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Kans op 2e golf, maar contactopsporing moet 2e lockdown vermijden: bekijk de beste fragmenten uit "Het coronadebat"  VRT NWS
2. Het Corona Debat met Marc Van Ranst, Erika Vlieghe, Maggie De Block (Open Vld), Bart De Wever (N-VA) en anderen  De Morgen
3. 'We moeten tijd winnen tot vaccin er is'  De Standaard
4. Het grote coronadebat: “We moeten tijd winnen tot vaccin er is”  Het Belang van Limburg
5. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Waasland-Beveren dropt bom, Club Brugge dreigt titel te verliezen  Voetbal24.be
2. Waasland-Beveren wil niet zakken: "1A met 18 is logische oplossing"  sporza.be
3. Waasland-Beveren heeft uitstekend nieuws voor Beerschot en OHL  VoetbalNieuws.be
4. Waasland-Beveren-voorzitter Dirk Huyck over de strijd om in 1A te blijven - Voetbalnieuws  Voetbalkrant.com
5. Voorzitter Waasland-Beveren: “Wij zullen nooit akkoord gaan met degradatie”  Het Laatste Nieuws
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. gaat voor een nieuw contract bij Antwerp - Voetbalnieuws  Voetbalkrant.com
2. 'Mbokani zorgt voor zeer onaangename transferverrassing bij Antwerp'  Voetbal24.be
3. Defour schenkt klare wijn over toekomst bij Antwerp  VoetbalNieuws.be
4. Steven Defour: “Er is wat interesse uit het buitenland, maar ik wil bij Antwerp blijven”  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. 'Sinan Bolat versiert fraaie toptransfer: Dit is zijn nieuwe club'  Voetbal24.be
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Het laatste woord is nog niet gezegd: "Niet ondenkbaar dat KBVB en clubs zich burgerlijke partij stellen in strafonderzoek naar Moeskroen”  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. Peter Vandenbempt over Moeskroen: "Het failliet van de licenties"  sporza.be
3. BAS-arbiter die Moeskroen laat gaan was debutant  Het Nieuwsblad
4. Belgische voetbalbond: “Principieel oneens met beslissing BAS om Moeskroen licentie toe te kennen”  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. Verbazing alom over licentie voor Moeskroen: “Hier laat Westerlo het niet bij, de strijd barst nu écht los”  Gazet van Antwerpen
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. TV-bazen over de impact van corona - DEEL 2. Davy Parmentier van VTM: “Hoe het straks verder moet, weet vandaag nog niemand”  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. 'Een vrijscène met 1,5 meter afstand, hoe doe je dat?'  De Tijd
3. TV-bazen over de impact van corona - DEEL 1. Olivier Goris van VRT: “Ik hou er rekening mee dat we de komende zes maanden geen seconde fictie draaien”  Het Laatste Nieuws
4. Zomer vol herhalingen, en herhalingen van herhalingen: coronacrisis is opdoffer voor alle tv-zenders, en vooral voor VRT  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. 'Temptation'-verleidster Eline verrast: “Vriendinnen met Elke, géén contact meer met Arda”  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. 'Kk hadt naaien', een slappe worst en een ongeziene belediging: dit viel onze 'Temptation'-watcher op  Het Nieuwsblad
3. Eline uit Temptation Island doet pikante uitspraken: 'Elke moet mij dankbaar zijn'  Nieuws365
4. Een erg straffe Elke, harde levenslessen en vreemde kronkels: dit was aflevering 12 van 'Temptation Island'  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. Zach over zijn gedrag in 'Temptation Island': “Ik wou een psychologisch spelletje spelen met Romee”  Het Nieuwsblad
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Valerie De Booser deelt uitdagende foto op Instagram vanuit haar kot  Het NieuwsbladHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. China lanceert nieuwe herbruikbare capsule voor vluchten met taikonauten  Tweakers
2. Chinees ruimteschip landt succesvol terug op aarde | Wetenschap & Planeet  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. China zet succesvolle stap richting eigen ruimtestation  Het Nieuwsblad
4. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

MSI komt met inruilprogramma voor upgrade naar Z490-moederbord  Hardware InfoHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Muzikanten brengen ultiem eerbetoon aan alle 'heroes' vanop het dak van het Jessa Ziekenhuis  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. Flip Kowlier en Isolde Lasoen filmen cover van Heroes op dak van Jessa  Het Belang van Limburg
3. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Smartphones aan spotprijzen, ze bestaan nog: onze gadget inspector test er twee  Het Belang van Limburg
2. GETEST. Spotgoedkope smartphones van minder dan 100 euro  Het Nieuwsblad
3. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Werkloosheid VS op hoogste peil sinds Tweede Wereldoorlog  De Tijd
2. Meer dan 20 miljoen Amerikaanse jobs verloren in april, werkloosheid schiet omhoog naar hoogste niveau in ruim 80 jaar  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. 'Cijfers uit de Grote Depressie'  De Standaard
4. Werkloosheid VS op hoogste niveau sinds Grote Depressie van jaren dertig  NU.nl
5. Werkloosheid VS naar hoogste niveau sinds de Grote Depressie  RTL Z
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Minister Muylle wil tijdelijke werkloosheid verlengen tot 1 ...  Het NieuwsbladHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Moeten we Brussels Airlines redden of niet?  De Tijd
2. Hoog spel rond Brussels Airlines  De Standaard
3. Akkoord tussen Swiss en Lufthansa: blauwdruk voor Brussels Airlines?  Trends
4. Lufthansa groep vanaf juni met 160 vliegtuigen de lucht in  Up in the Sky
5. Lufthansa Group verdubbelt in juni het aantal vliegtuigen in dienst  Luchtvaartnieuws.nl
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1. 173 gestrande Belgen eindelijk thuis na quarantaine in Tenerife: “Regering liet ons aan ons lot over. We hebben twee maanden op ons terras moeten doorbrengen”  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. 173 gestrande Belgen eindelijk thuis na quarantaine in Tenerife: “Regering heeft te weinig gedaan!”  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. Na quarantaine in Tenerife: 173 Belgen eindelijk weer thuis  De Morgen
4. Belgen die vastzaten op Tenerife charterden zelf vliegtuig naar huis  De Standaard
5. West-Vlaming regelt repatriëring gestrande Belgen  Focus en WTV
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Motorrijder uit Zottegem overleden na zwaar ongeval in Zwalm, bestuurster auto zwaargewond  Het NieuwsbladHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. 76 nieuwe overlijdens in de afgelopen 24 uur, evenveel ziekenhuisopnames  Het Belang van Limburg
2. OVERZICHT. Dalende curve zet zich voort. 76 overlijdens, 210 patiënten naar huis en 76 nieuwe opnames  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. Coronavirus: 76 overlijdens, 210 patiënten ontslagen uit het ziekenhuis  newsmonkey
4. Minder patiënten in onze ziekenhuizen  Het Nieuwsblad
5. OVERZICHT. 76 nieuwe ziekenhuisopnames en overlijdens, 585 nieuwe besmettingen | Binnenland | Nieuws  Het Laatste Nieuws
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Noodnummer 1722 geactiveerd wegens slecht weer op zondag  Het NieuwsbladHele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Verbod om water op te pompen komt vroeger dan ooit  De Tijd
2. Extreem droge maand april: verbod om water op te pompen uit tien kwetsbare stromen in provincie Antwerpen  Gazet van Antwerpen
3. Vlaams infocentrum land- en tuinbouw - Captatieverbod in 10 stroomgebieden in Antwerpen  Vilt
4. Water oppompen verboden in tiental kleine waterlopen in Antwerpen door aanhoudende droogte  VRT NWS
5. Captatieverbod in tien ecologisch kwetsbare stroomgebieden i...  Het Nieuwsblad
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Minister van Toerisme Demir wil toeristen in Vlaanderen spreiden  De Standaard
2. Minister van Toerisme Demir wil met druktebarometer toeristen in Vlaanderen spreiden  Het Laatste Nieuws
3. Minister Zuhal Demir licht toerismeplan voor de zomer toe: “Ik wil dat de mensen Vlaanderen herontdekken”  Het Nieuwsblad
4. Ziekenhuizen kust ongerust over komst toeristen  Focus en WTV
5. Minister van Toerisme Demir werkt aan plan om toeristen in Vlaanderen te spreiden  De Morgen
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1. Uitvoerders van roofmoord op Leopoldine De Decker krijgen 28 jaar, opdrachtgevers hoeven niet terug naar de cel  Gazet van Antwerpen
2. Na negen uur in beraad: vier veroordelingen en één vrijspraak in roofmoord Leopoldine (76)  Het Nieuwsblad
3. Straffen tussen 3 en 29 jaar cel geëist in zaak roofmoord op Leopoldine De Decker  Gazet van Antwerpen
4. ASSISEN. Tot 28 jaar cel voor roofmoord op Leopoldine De Decker, familie opgelucht: “Nu kunnen we eindelijk verder met ons leven”  Het Laatste Nieuws
5. ASSISEN. Roofmoord op Leopoldine De Decker: 28 jaar cel voor uitvoerders, (deels) voorwaardelijke straffen voor opdrachtgevers  Het Laatste Nieuws
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

1. Betogers uit erg diverse hoeken protesteren tegen coronamaatregelen in Duitsland  VRT NWS
2. Duitsland demonstreert tegen coronamaatregelen  De Standaard
3. Duitse ME grijpt in bij protest tegen coronamaatregelen  Telegraaf.nl
4. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Man die fietspad bezaait met prikkeldraad, spijkers en glas praat zichzelf aan de galg tegen visser die stiekem filmt  Het Laatste Nieuws

LIVE. De Wever over eventuele tweede piek: “Normale quarantaine is er een van zieken, niet van gezonde mensen”  Het Laatste Nieuws

Experts, economen en politici: iedereen is nu al bezig met een tweede coronagolf. “Zolang er geen vaccin is, zal het nieuwe normaal blijven bestaan”  Het Nieuwsblad

Stranger Still Michaelbrent Collings Written Insomnia Press, 2020 Reviewed by Andrew Byers Stranger Still is a stand-alone sequel to Michaelbrent Collings’ horror thriller Strangers, which I reviewed way back in 2013. I enjoyed Strangers a lot, so was very pleasantly surprised to find that after this long hiatus, Collings had returned to that world. In […]

The Best of Both Worlds S.P. Miskowski Trepidatio Publishing May 1, 2020 Reviewed by Elaine Pascale  The Best of Both Worlds is a sequel to The Worst is Yet to Come in the sense that the plot runs parallel and the characters’ story arcs intersect in subtle yet important ways. The Best of Both Worlds […]

And the answer is: Yes, we did. Last week. But Open Road Media is putting The Iron Dragon's Daughter on e-sale again. $1.99 on this Wednesday, April 1, only. I don't have to tell you what holiday that is. But apparently they really mean it.

I expect most people who read this blog and wanted an e-copy of that book got one during last week's sale. But I publicize the event for two reasons:

1) Writers should always be as cooperative to their publishers as they can stand being.

2) Maybe the reason for this promotion is that they're putting a lot of books on sale at once.

If you're an ebook reader, you might want to look into the second possibility. Or maybe subscribe to one of the newsletters below.

Here's the e-letter they sent me, with all the boilerplate:
                         
Dear Michael Swanwick,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13	Title	Author	Promo Type	Country	Start Date	End Date	Promo Price
9781504025669	The Iron Dragon's Daughter	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	US	2020-04-01	2020-04-01	$1.99
9781504025669	The Iron Dragon's Daughter	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	CA	2020-04-01	2020-04-01	$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter	Link
Early Bird Books	Subscribe Now
The Lineup	Subscribe Now
The Portalist	Subscribe Now
Murder & Mayhem	Subscribe Now
A Love So True	Subscribe Now
The Archive	Subscribe Now
The Reader	Subscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

Over on Facebook, Samuel R. Delany, answering a question in a post, offered the best and most succinct writing advice anyone has ever codified. Here, in its entirety, it is:

Writing advice: Read and reread. Think of a story you have never read but wish you had; then write it as carefully as you can. Finish it, and send it around till it's published.

The third sentence, as Chip noted at the time, was a condensation of advice that Robert A. Heinlein offered. So what you have above is the combined wisdom of two of the greatest careers science fiction has ever seen.

I could unpack that brief paragraph at enormous length. But, honestly, there's no need. You read it and you understood it. Now you only have to live it.


Above: The photo by James Hamilton was lifted from The Nation, where it illustrated a typically thoughtful and enlightened interview with Chip. You can find it here.

My Subterranean Press collection, The Postmodern Adventuers of Darger and Surplus,  has received quite a splendid review for Locus by Gary K. Wolfe, which has now been posted on Locus Online. Darger and Surplus are, as you probably know, gentlemen grifters in the future civilization that rises from the ashes of our own, after a failed revolution by the Artificial Intelligences we are currently hard at work creating. Humanity mostly won that war and the demons and mad gods were banished to a subterranean infrastructure too widespread and well-defended to be rooted out. But, as a result, the mechanical sciences have languished while the biological ones thrive.

All this is spelled out in the review more entertainingly than I have put it here. I encourage you to read it.

Meanwhile, here's the pull-quote I'd grab from the review if I were the sort of person who did that sort of thing:

As those Hugo voters apparently recognized nearly 20 years ago, Darger and Surplus not only join the small company of SF’s classic rogues, but the world they occupy is as complex, detailed, and morally chaotic as we’ve come to expect from the best of Swanwick’s fiction.

You can find the review in its glorious entirety here. Or you can just go to locusmag.com and poke around. Bot Locus and Locus Online make for informative, enjoyable reading


And as long as you're there . . .

Like everything else, Locus is feeling the financial stress of the lockdown. If you can afford it, and if you, like me, value the publication, consider contributing a little toward its survival.

Very few people in the science fiction community ever came face to face with Alice Sheldon, who wrote SF under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr, much less met her tarantulas. One of those very few was Gardner Dozois. When he sold his papers to UC Riverside (the proceeds went to keeping his wife, Susan Casper, alive for several years longer than would otherwise have happened), bookman Henry Wessells became aware of the correspondence between Sheldon and Dozois.

Now, Henry has created a chapbook, She Saved Us from World War Three, containing the two most significant letters from that correspondence. The first is from Sheldon, telling Gardner that the secret of her identity was about to go public and that she was not a man but a woman. The second is her relieved response to Gardner's assurance that they were still friends.

Which understates how Gardner felt about Sheldon/Tiptree. He was in awe of her as a writer and remained so after the murder-suicide that ended her life.

To go with the letters and give them some context, I interviewed Gardner about his friendship with Alice Sheldon and this introduction now forms the bulk of the chapbook.

Today is the publication date for She Saved Us from World War Three and it is currently available for sale. It costs $20, which is not cheap for twenty pages of prose but is cheap for a beautifully made limited edition chapbook with fold-out facsimiles of the letters themselves.

Those of you who need it know who you are. Me, I already have my copy. I'm going to dig up the oversized paperclip which Sheldon gave to Gardner  as a souvenir of their meeting and Gardner gave to me because souvenirs meant nothing to him and keep the two of them together. This is a very meaningful publication for me.

You can find ordering information here.


Above: The chapbook's cover. Photo by John DeChancie and used with his permission. John is a Mensch. I esteem him highly.

Look what came in the mail! My contributor's copies of The Postmodern Adventures of Darger and Surplus. Which I can now honestly tell you are beautiful books. Marianne--owner, reditor, and sole entrepreneur of Dragonstairs Press, remember--especially admired the texture of the endpapers.

This is the first Darger and Surplus collection of short, and it collects everything except the two novels. But I should caution you that it is a slim book--five previously published stories, four related short-shorts, and "There Was an Old Woman..." a story written expressly for this collection.  Bloated this volume is not.

Subterranean Press has created, as I said, one lovely volume. It costs $40, because it's a high-quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand. But for a high quality collector's item, published in a limited edition of one thousand, that's pretty cheap.

Here's the table of contents:

Introduction:

• Mother Goose’s Errant Sons

Stories:

• The Dog Said Bow-Wow
• The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
• Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
• Tawny Petticoats
• There Was An Old Woman

• Appendix:

• Introduction to Appendix: A Little Smoke and a Mirror or Three
• Smoke and Mirrors: Four Scenes from the Postutopian Future

If you're interested, you can buy a copy of the book here.

Or you can buy an e-book version for $5 here.

Oe you can simply go the the Subterranean website and poke around here.  Mine isn't the only book there you want. Far from it.

Yet again, something astonishing has arrived in my mailbox. This time, it's a chapbook titled Paris ett poem, containing a Swedish translation (surely the first) of Hoope Mirrlees' modernist masterpiece, Paris, a Poem. Mirrlees, you'll recall, is best known in genre circles for her fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist, in academic circles for being on the fringes of Bloomsbury, and in poetic circles for this poem.

Ylva Gislén translated the poem, wrote an introduction, provided explanatory notes, and created two collages for inclusion in the chapbook. All of it, clearly, a labor of love.

Quite a lovely  book. Published by Ellerströms.


And Speaking of Good Things . . .

The Temporary Culture chapbook assembled by Henry Wessells, "She Saved Us from World War Three," was reviewed by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post. Here's what he said:

Besides being one of the stars of “The Booksellers,” Henry Wessells is also the proprietor of the micro-publisher, Temporary Culture. His latest booklet, “She Saved Us From World War Three,” brings together an interview, essay and two letters highlighting the friendship between Gardner Dozois, the longtime editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Alice Sheldon, the former Washington intelligence agent whose intense, sometimes feminist sci-fi — no one ever forgets “The Women Men Don’t See” — was written using the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. In one letter Sheldon explains that she has pretty much stopped writing because “the stories were getting to hurt too much.”

Which is pretty good coverage for a micro-press.

Line 1 is over capacity—adding more stops isn't the solution.

We need to talk about this idea to extend the Yonge line up to Richmond Hill. The Yonge line is already congested. Anyone who rides the subway regularly is aware of this. The immediate plans to address it are, shall we say, unimpressive. The Yonge Relief Network Study done in 2015 for Metrolinx [PDF] focused […]

The post Extending the Yonge line will only make crowding worse appeared first on Torontoist.

Keesmaat’s Next Venture, Shitty Architecture Men, Mod Squad, Presto Problemo, Bench Press, and more in this debut edition.

Another Glass Box is a weekly roundup of urban design news in Toronto (and occasionally beyond), in bite-size pieces. It’s curated by Dan Seljak, who’s done marketing and communications work for architecture and construction companies for the last seven years—and who still loves this city enough to line up for brunch.  Content warning: some of the […]

The post Introducing: Another Glass Box, a new weekly architecture feature appeared first on Torontoist.

Why all the secrecy?

If you follow the news in Toronto or if you’re interested in technology, you’ve probably heard of Sidewalk Toronto by now. It’s a joint project of Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, and Waterfront Toronto. This is the tech giant’s first foray into urban development and infrastructure, with Toronto hosting the pilot project. In […]

The post Civic Tech: We tried to get a copy of the Sidewalk Toronto agreement appeared first on Torontoist.

WWE Money In The Bank Kickoff begins at 6 pm ET/3 pm PT on Sunday, May 10.

Top 10 Friday Night SmackDown moments: WWE Top 10, May 8, 2020

Wisconsin officials believe a plan of reducing compensation to highest-earning employees should help save the athletic department about $2.8 million.

Becky Lynch has become the Superstar with the most total days as Raw Women’s Champion, surpassing Alexa Bliss.