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Back in 2020, I bought the LG 27GN950 Nano IPS monitor for $800, which I thought was a steal at the time. It checked every box I cared about: a fast IPS panel with minimal backlight bleeding, 160Hz refresh rate, and 4K resolution. I assumed I was going to use it as my primary gaming monitor for the next 5-6 years, but then OLED monitors started coming out. In 2024, I bought the Alienware AW2725DF, a 1440p 360Hz OLED gaming monitor, for $850. I basically paid more for a resolution downgrade, but do I regret it? Absolutely not.

DEAR ABBY: My young daughter and I had the pleasure of spending three months with my parents while my husband was deployed. We had a lovely visit, but over the course of our stay, I noticed my parents were spending more time on their phones than previously. Both are retired and in their mid-60s.I'm glad they are keeping up with technology, but I'm also concerned that their phone use may have a negative impact on their social health, behavioral health and mental acuity as they age. Growing up, we never had the TV or computers in our main living space, and screen time was limited. We ate dinner together every night, and socialization and conversation was an expectation.During my stay, my parents brought their phones to the dinner table and grabbed them midmeal to answer messages or search things on the internet. Throughout the days, I'd look up from what I was doing and see them glued to their screens. This new behavior is so different from the way they raised me. How can I speak to them about my concerns and encourage them to consider decreasing their phone usage? — NOTICED THE CHANGE IN WASHINGTONDEAR NOTICED: Yes, many things have changed since the time when you were raised. But if you think the day has arrived for you to parent your parents, forget about it. It not only won't work, but it could also cause resentment because they are adults and not impressionable teenagers being educated about social interaction.DEAR ABBY: My college roommate and I became close friends. I always thought he was a little bit arrogant. When I caught him getting upset that a girl liked me and not him, I realized he has always been about comparing and competing.At age 30, after we ended up working for the same company, we had a falling-out. I'm sure he has his complaints about me, but I am no longer interested in being his friend. We're 36 now and still involved in our fantasy football league, so we see each other from time to time. We're generally civil to each other, especially for the sake of the league.Well, he now wants to rekindle the friendship and keeps asking me to hang out. I've made excuses so far, and I wish he would take a hint, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to eventually tell him (again) that I'm not interested in hanging out. I don't want to hurt his feelings any more than I have to. Please help. — NOT FEELING IT IN KANSASDEAR NOT FEELING IT: You are not obligated to have anything more to do with this person than you wish. If the only time the two of you interact is during the fantasy football season, he shouldn't be too hard to avoid. When he asks to hang out, continue doing what you have been, which is to say you are busy. Eventually, he may take the hint.Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.For an excellent guide to becoming a better conversationalist and a more sociable person, order "How to Be Popular." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Popularity Booklet, P.O. Box 446, Kings Mills, OH 45034-0446. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

The judge presiding over this week’s trial of a man accused in a murder plot against U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino became an advocate for increased judicial security after a litigant in 2005 murdered her mother and husband in a crime that shocked Chicago.Threats against judges are disturbingly common in 2026. But after that harrowing experience 21 years ago, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that the “fostering of disrespect for judges can only encourage those who are on the edge, or on the fringe, to exact revenge.”Lefkow called on the committee to help sustain “a society based on the rule of law, instead of right being defined by might.” Related Bovino murder-for-hire case on thin ice after judge bars gang evidence from trial The judge went on in later years to hand a 4 ½ year prison sentence to notorious Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. Now, the 82-year-old Lefkow is set to preside over the first trial resulting from the deportation campaign in Chicago known as “Operation Midway Blitz.”Juan Espinoza Martinez is accused of offering $10,000 for Bovino’s murder.Lefkow is a Kansas native who graduated from Northwestern University's law school. She assumed senior status as a judge in 2012.Two of Lefkow’s colleagues in Chicago — U.S. District Judges Sara Ellis and April Perry — have recently acknowledged threats and intimidation they’ve experienced while presiding over challenges to the Trump administration. The Dirksen Federal CourthouseRich Hein/Sun-Times But the violence that prompted Lefkow’s testimony in the Senate came in February 2005, five years after President Bill Clinton nominated her to the bench. Lefkow found her mother, Donna Humphrey, and husband, Michael Lefkow, shot to death in her Edgewater basement.The investigation led to a man Lefkow had ruled against in a civil rights lawsuit. He shot and killed himself days later after police stopped his van for having faulty brake lights in a suburb outside Milwaukee.The man’s DNA matched a cigarette butt in a sink in the Lefkows’ home, and ammunition found in his home matched a bullet fired in the Lefkows’ basement. Authorities also found a note in which he admitted to the killings and listed judges who’d angered him.Two of those judges had offices in Milwaukee.In his note, which appeared nearly identical to one sent to WMAQ-Channel 5, the man wrote that he sneaked into the basement early in the day hoping to eventually encounter the judge, but when other family members discovered him he "had no choice."Lefkow quietly returned to work at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in summer 2005, and a note appeared outside her courtroom asking parties not to mention the tragedy. She went on to preside over Burge’s perjury trial in 2010 and wound up giving a prison sentence to the man who’d become synonymous with Chicago police torture allegations. Related Former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge, tied to torture cases, has died Burge died in 2018. But during his 2011 sentencing, Lefkow told him that jurors didn’t believe the testimony he’d offered in his own defense.“And I must agree,” she said, “that I did not either.”Lefkow said she wished there was not “such a dismal failure of leadership in the department that it came to this.” She said “so much pain could have been avoided” if state or federal prosecutors had acted earlier.And, in a move that surprised court observers, Lefkow brought up the murders of her family members. She told the courtroom she felt “deeply indebted to the valiant police officers” who tracked down the killer.She explained that, “I am no stranger to violent crime.”“Respect is hardly a sufficient word for how I feel about the talent and dedication of the people who helped me and my family in a time of crisis,” Lefkow said. “Yet, too many times, I have seen officers sit in the witness box to my right and give implausible testimony to defend themselves or a fellow officer against accusations of wrongdoing.“Each time I…

Seemingly unrelated places — from authors’ homes to grave sites to garbage dumps-turned-golf courses — serve as the imagination for writers of the essays in “Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest.”The new creative nonfiction collection of 73 essays (University of Illinois Press) is inspired by the writers’ encounters with the places that make up Midwestern literature. Featuring essays about spaces important to writers like Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros, the literary tour snakes readers through places like St. Louis, Cleveland, and Chicago. There are seven essays devoted to Chicago area cities, from Hammond, Ind. to Forest Haven, Ill. Green Room Newsletter You’re subscribed!Please check your inbox for your confirmation. Stay ahead of what’s hitting Chicago stages, galleries, museums and more with Green Room, WBEZ’s weekly arts & culture newsletter! Sorry, there was an error registering your email. Email Sign Up By subscribing, you agree with WBEZ’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Contributor Ava Tomasula y Garcia knew she wanted to write about the Calumet City region, where her father is from. Although she grew up in South Bend, Ind., she returned to the region in January 2024 to do research on undiagnosed illnesses former steel mill workers from the region battle through.“A lot of people experience brain fog, unexplained dizziness, things that don't fit into the kind of paradigm or a diagnosis you'd get in a clinic, and a lot of people seek to remedy and feel better by their own means,” said Garcia, a Chicago community organizer turned researcher and essayist. “So whether that be supplements, energy work, a lot of different kinds of things that people do that also don't fit the image of like science-based medicine.”In Garcia’s essay, she discusses serious themes like the workers’ health conditions. But she also tackles more light-hearted memories such as biting into a steamy cheesy gordita on a freezing winter day. “I want (readers) to know that this Calumet region, Cal City, Southeast Chicago, Northwest Indiana, has an incredible history, not just of waste, extraction, oppression, but of resistance and a kind of continuing of life that is just in this landscape,” Garcia said.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times “Springtime bugs gliding back and forth on the Little Cal River, weaving a gossamer haze, summer heat shimmering, a thousand mirages. People always say that we have the prettiest sunsets and then joke that it is because of the pollution,” she says in her essay, which she wrote for the book while staying in the area.“I want [readers] to know that this Calumet region, Cal City, Southeast Chicago, Northwest Indiana, has an incredible history, not just of waste, extraction, oppression, but of resistance and a kind of continuing of life that is just in this landscape,” Garcia said. “I want people to appreciate the history that they're walking in.”Garcia also nods to the Calumet City writers who inspired her, including the poet Jose Olivarez. Olivarez, it turns out, wrote the forward to “Lingering Inland.”He says being from Calumet City gave him deeper perspective on the world.“The steel mill where my dad worked closed up. And not just his steel mill, but basically all of the steel mills closed up, and so it was hard for him to find work after that,” Olivarez said. “The house that (my parents) bought and were expecting to accumulate value because of all the jobs that left the area ended up decreasing in value, so that at the time that my parents were finally in a position to pay off the mortgage, it was a liability and not an asset.” Poet Jose Olivarez says being from Calumet City gave him deeper perspective on the world.Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times Reflecting on these large-scale demographic changes, Olivarez says in his forward for Lingering Inland, “Because no one is looking to the Midwest for innovation, it has become an excellent place to experiment. The worst has already happened. Our former…

The state Legislature raises its curtain again on Wednesday revealing more than the usual degree of economic uncertainty that lawmakers confront each year. Not all the forecast figures are dire, but there is surely ample reason for Hawaii’s elected leaders to approach spending with rational caution.