I’m old enough to remember when the catchphrase “winning!”—spat out with a manic, acerbic edge—was associated not with Donald Trump, but with another headline-grabbing television star of the 2010s: Charlie Sheen. If we’re in the same boat, sit back. Today, VF is running a particularly juicy excerpt from Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre’s memoir, in which the serial TV creator lays out precisely what happened when Sheen’s offscreen antics made every tabloid editor’s dreams come true. Remember Sheen’s Plaza Hotel incident, the concept of “tiger blood,” when he called himself and Alex Jones (!) “Vatican assassin warlocks” (and meant it as a compliment)? Yeah, most of that is in there. So are Lorre’s frantic attempts to save the show by replacing Sheen, first with Hugh Grant (who, writes Lorre, “was about to sign the contract when he abruptly walked out of the room and became ‘unreachable’”), and eventually, successfully, with Ashton Kutcher. So really, who’s winning in the end?
Elsewhere, we’ve also got an excerpt from Kevin Roose’s new book The AGI Chronicles, about Anthropic’s (doomed?) attempts to prevent AI from killing all humans; Elise Taylor profiles British bad boy chef Thomas Straker; and this headline really says it all: “Inside the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson’s Quest for the World’s Most Beautiful Jewelry.” More tomorrow! | 
