Judith and Richard Lang have been combing their local beach in Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California since 1999, collecting the plastic debris of our daily lives: cheese spreaders form those packaged lunches, milk jug lids, disposable lighters. They cart home this junk, clean and categorize it, and finally transform it into gorgeous assemblages. It's meticulous, artisanal up-cycling and it's both beautiful and sad. The Langs have an exhibit running currently at the San Francisco Public Library and GOOD caught up with Judith recently to talk about her process and where all those plastic cigar tips come from.
GOOD: How did you select plastic flotsam as your primary material?
JUDITH SELBY: Hey, it's free art supplies! It's abundant and it's archival.
GOOD: You must pile up quite a bit of beach plastic. Tell us a bit about your organizing systems.
SELBY: A picture is worth a thousand words:
GOOD: How about two thousand words?
GOOD: When I've done beach cleanup days, plastic cigar tips are usually the most common object. What are your top three?
SELBY: Yes, those pesky tiparillo tips are something we find every time we go to the beach. We have hundreds in our collection. But, funny thing, we don't know anyone who uses them.
We have presented them as jewelry and laid them out as if they were specimens in a drawer in a natural history museum.
"Pacifier" is the title of this necklace in reference to the "jewel" fashioned from the remains of the baby binky and the tiparillo tips strung like pearls to shape the ring of the necklace.
Kid pacifiers. Adult pacifiers
GOOD: You've been collecting and reassembling beach trash for over a decade. Have you seen any improvement in the problem over the years?
SELBY: The proliferation of plastic in the ocean is growing exponentially. Fortunately, along with it is the public awareness and the international efforts to stem the tides with great organizations like the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
GOOD: What's the strangest thing you've found?
SELBY: Every piece of plastic found on the beach is strange. As the BLM calls it: "matter-out-of-place." Have we become so accustomed to plastic everywhere that we no longer think it unusual that there is plastic on the beach?
Rice grain and white rice.Image via 
Person eats rice.Image via 
Washing and rinsing rice. 
Mother and daughter eating rice meal.Image via 
Father talks with son.Image via 
Dad and son sit on the floor flexing muscles.Image via 
"Now I'm intrigued." 
Celebrate the wins.Image via 
Surprised and happy mother.Image via 
Problematic homework question
A student’s brilliant homework answer outsmarted her teacher's ridiculously sexist question
From an early age, children absorb societal norms—including gender stereotypes. But one sharp 8-year-old from Birmingham, England, challenged a sexist homework question designed to reinforce outdated ideas.
An English teacher created a word puzzle with clues containing “UR.” One prompt read “Hospital Lady,” expecting students to answer “nurse.”
While most did, Yasmine wrote “surgeon”—a perfectly valid answer. Her father, Robert Sutcliffe, shared the incident on X (formerly Twitter), revealing the teacher had scribbled “or nurse” beside Yasmine’s response, revealing the biased expectation.
For Yasmine, the answer was obvious: both her parents are surgeons. Her perspective proves how representation shapes ambition. If children only see women as nurses, they internalize limits. But when they witness diversity—like female surgeons—they envision broader possibilities.
As Rebecca Brand noted in The Guardian: “Their developing minds are that little bit more unquestioning about what they see and hear on their screens. What message are we giving those impressionable minds about women? And how might we be cutting the ambitions of little girls short before they've even had the chance to develop properly?”
X users praised Yasmine while critiquing the question. Such subtle conditioning reinforces stereotypes early. Research confirms this: a study found children as young as four associate jobs with gender, with girls choosing “feminine” roles (e.g., nursing) and boys opting for “masculine” ones (e.g., engineering).
Even preschoolers avoided careers misaligned with their gender, proving sexist conditioning begins startlingly young.
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The problem spans globally. Data from 50 countries reveals that by age 15, girls disproportionately abandon math and science, while boys avoid caregiving fields like teaching and nursing. This segregation perpetuates stereotypes—women are underrepresented in STEM, and men in caregiving roles—creating a cycle that limits both genders.
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This article originally appeared last year.