The Tiniest, Most Cold-Blooded Killers in the City
Shocking Stories from L.A.’s Insect Underworld Read Better Than True Crime
As you get into your car in the parking lot of the Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake, you might just be within arm’s reach of cannibals. Not the human kind–but the insect variety.
Inside a wasp that is buzzing around a nearby bush dwells a bug known as the twisted wing parasite. These tiny insects are genetically close to flies and resemble nothing so much as a small black speck. But placing that speck under a microscope reveals huge, orb-like eyes …
Has the Affordable Care Act Fulfilled Its Promises?
A Year Into the New Healthcare Landscape, People Have More Choices and More Access—for the Most Part
A year ago, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was launched with an abundance of promises to Californians: People with preexisting conditions would no longer be denied coverage from health insurance companies. More people would receive free or low-cost coverage through Medi-Cal. Shopping for health insurance on the Covered California website would be as easy as shopping on Amazon.
Have these promises been kept? And has one of the most highly touted promises of this sweeping healthcare reform—that it would give consumers …
Paddling the Wailoa River in a Homemade Canoe
A boy’s life on Hawaii’s Big Island in the 1950s revolved around water. My elementary school in Hilo was right by Bakers Beach, a spring-fed pond called Ice Pond, and the Wailoa River. Every day …
Is Local Healthcare Better Healthcare?
As Vice President Biden famously said back in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a big deal, literally and figuratively. The era of Obamacare is about a large-scale shift in the American healthcare system, …
Last Call at the Cat & Fiddle
Los Angeles is not a city known for dwelling on the past. So if a restaurant or bar can last more than 10 years, it’s automatically designated as a “local icon.” Stick around for three …
A New Way of Life Founder Susan Burton
Susan Burton is the founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, which provides housing and support services to formerly incarcerated women in South Central Los Angeles. Before participating in a …
This Is What Outrage Looks Like in Mexico City
Mexicans have taken to social media, and to the streets, to express their outrage at the disappearance in late September of 43 students from a rural teachers’ college in the southern state of Guerrero. The …
Mexico’s Outrage over Los 43
Forty three students from a small rural teachers’ college in Mexico’s mountainous southern backwater have jolted this nation out of its decade-long immunity to a proper outrage to mass violence, and threatened to hijack President …