26 charts and maps to be thankful for

The press — and humans in general — have a strong negativity bias. Bad economic news gets more coverage than good news. Negative experiences affect people more, and for longer, than positive ones. So it's natural for things like Russia's incursion into Ukraine or the rise of ISIS or the Ebola outbreak to weigh on us more than, say, the fact that extreme poverty has fallen by half since 1990, or that life expectancy is increasing, especially in poor countries. But for Thanksgiving it's worth paying some attention to the latter factors. The world is getting much, much better on a whole variety of dimensions. Here are just a few.