Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Strange Builds, Better Worlds: Grow Food, Invent and Play for Change
16
items Food comes before the game. This list follows one thread: grow, build, play, share. It starts with vertical gardens and real food systems, moves through machines you can understand and tools that turn ideas into objects, and ends with games where pla...
Sections
5
Growing is the foundation
From a digital idea to a real object
Strange mechanics you can understand
Games as practice and real participation
Keep the world-building grounded
Growing is the foundation
Food first. Vertical gardens, a garden robot and the open software that moves harvests to people.
A recirculating hydroponic garden that climbs a wall. The foundation idea of this list: grow up, not out. Check light, water and maintenance needs before choosing any system.
ZipGrow™ Farm Wall™ | Ultimate Vertical Hydroponic System
An open-source robot that plants and waters a real garden bed. The bridge between a digital plan and living food. A serious garden project, not a plug-in toy.
FarmBot Genesis
Growing food is half the problem; getting it to people is the other half. Nonprofit, open-source marketplace software for farmers and community food hubs.
Open Food Network
From a digital idea to a real object
Free design tools and maker communities that turn a sketch into something you can hold.
Free, open-source parametric 3D design. Change a dimension instead of starting over. The practical step between a strange idea and a part that fits.
FreeCAD
Free, open-source 3D creation. Give an idea a shape people can see - a garden world, an odd machine, a scene that explains itself. A convincing render is not proof something works.
Blender
The gap between designing a thing and knowing how to make it. Fab Labs offer tools, training and a making community. Check your local lab for access, training and fees.
The Fab Foundation
Where do materials come from, and where do they go next? Guides for plastic-recycling workspaces. Real planning resources: equipment, ventilation, skills and safety come first.
Starterkits Overview
Strange mechanics you can understand
Machines with their logic out in the open: marbles, moving chains and hydraulics you can touch.
A computer powered by falling marbles. Ramps, switches and gears make the decisions visible. Strange mechanics you can actually understand.
Turing Tumble - Build Marble-Powered Computers
Circuits you can touch. Moving chains stand in for hidden electronics, so an abstract idea becomes something your hands can learn. Sits beside Turing Tumble: one shows computing, the other shows circuit behavior.
Spintronics - Build Mechanical Circuits
Build a claw, move liquid, watch motion happen at the other end. A small hands-on way into the mechanics behind bigger tools. Follow the kit guidance and age recommendations.
Hydraulic Claw
Games as practice and real participation
Play that builds real habits - including two games where players contribute to actual research.
Build ridiculous chain reactions, then work out why they fail. A playful sandbox for cause and effect - the invention side of this list is allowed to be funny.
Contraption Maker
Design a machine, watch it run, then make it smaller, faster or simpler. Fictional alchemy, real habits of process design. The strange machinery stays strange.
Opus Magnum
A puzzle game where players fold proteins used in real scientific research. Play becomes contribution. One session promises no cures - the participation is the point.
Foldit
Design RNA patterns, see how they fold, and learn from laboratory feedback on selected player designs. A game community taking part in research instead of only imagining it.
Eterna
Keep the world-building grounded
One book that connects inventions to everyday needs, and the shirt that carries the artwork.
A funny, illustrated guide to rebuilding civilization from first principles. The reading companion for this list: what knowledge does a working world actually need?
How to Invent Everything by Ryan North: 9780735220157 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
The art companion to this list: my own Dinky-T Chnge4Games design, a garden portal into an imagined world. Included as artwork, not a tool or a fundraising promise.
PORTAL Garden World Tee