Generous Muse & The Museletter

A Substack hack, creepy AI fingers, and some beautiful maybe muses.

I’ve been substacking for a bit over a year now and just figured out something about the platform that made me smack my head. I kept seeing these drops in my subscriptions and wondering…do readers hate posts about Parenting? Rockstars? Nazis? I write on so many different topics I am sure there are sum zero readers whose interests 100% overlap my own, and we all drift into and out of each others’ spheres…but who am I offending in droves?

There seemed to be no clear correlation, until I dug deeper and realized…

I’ve been inviting people to unsubscribe!

Does this sound familiar?

Remember: If you’d like to get ONLY this semi-annual Museletter instead of all those weekly postings, check the bottom of the About page for how to adjust your subscription.

I’ve been instructing readers to turn off all the topics except the Museletter. Problem is, my main account was named “Generous Muse!” So everyone who unsubscribed from the outpouring was lost forever!

So went ahead and renamed the whole thing The Museletter. You can still get here through www.generousmuse.org, and most of my posts will now come through with the lovely new Generous Muse header. Do you like it?

It’s excerpted (yes officer I recognize I am using a literary term for graphic design but I can't think of a better word … yes, sir, here's my Poetic License, sir), from this ubiquitous internet photo that comes up when you google “Cornucopia.” Isn’t she gorgeous? You can still see my own cartoon + photoshopped cornucopia muse on the About page (should you go there to edit your subscription, for example), but this ceramic tile (majolica?) is also so wonderfully cartoony. I wish I knew its origin. Maybe one of my travelers out there has seen her in some Spanish or Italian village, hauling around that vases full of corn 🌽 and flowers🌸? Corny and flowery! 😊And she looks exactly like me!

Or was she made with AI? (Just look at that weird hand…)

Photo from Pixabay. ~ there’s a signature that looks like ‘Babette Maria Treviso’

You know how bad at hands AI is, right? It's hilarious. One of the first things I ever asked for a magic picture of was “cross your fingers.” Here's what it did:

😱 Sorry!

😬 I know you can’t unsee that now. But seriously, 🤔 can AI not even look at emojis? I guess crossing our fingers🤞is such a normal human habit we don’t even realize how weird it must be to an intelligence 🧠 without a body 💪.

To wash those Annihilation-like image from your poor eyes, dip them in this soothing stream of beautiful musey contenders I snapped myself in European museums:

This speaks more to my mask thing than to inspiration. (Except regarding inspiration for costumes! And characters!) Unknown pink peekaboo reveler from Museo Revoltella in Trieste

I adore this huddle of 4 generations of women. The colors! I feel like I don’t have one muse but a chorus of them from all wisdoms. Pitti Palace, Firenze

I adore how there’s a literal Cupid handing this artist her brushes, not arrows, but just as piercing in the pursuit of love. How fun to paint in the nude! Is she painting a self-portrait? Is she the muse herself, creating art in her own image? Giovanni di Sangiovanni, Pitti Palace, Florence

Which one do you love best?

Speaking of cornucopias, it’s time to get out my Art Deco/Art Nouveau fusion wedding gift future heirloom Roseville vase! Because my lovely new logo lady is so Thanksgiving-y and I’ve got to start harvesting the sauerkraut.

I hope you’re all a-mused.

And I hope you like the mini-rebranding. It’s about time! (Subscribers, please enjoy The Annointing!)