NBC News reports that funeral costs have risen 77% over two decades — a traditional burial now runs $10,000 to $15,000, a no-frills cremation is still more than $2,500, and families who planned for traditional burial are ending up with cremation not for religious reasons but financial ones. Also: Illinois has had 243 preliminary tornado reports in 2026, breaking the all-time US state record set by Texas in 2015, in a state that averages 66 tornadoes per year — and the year isn't over. And The Atlantic profiled China's strangest cultural phenomenon: a genuinely terrible movie that has generated $200 million at the box office specifically because audiences find joy in experiencing something so bad together. Plus a naked DoorDash driver, a pilot who announced over the PA \"I am the one who is ill,\" the alien abduction story where the alien was the one abducted, and the US-Mexico cheese name dispute.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}