Clearly I'm out of the loop, why would it not be uncalled for?

I don't think they can tell Blender what to do. As such it's just more money for Blender! Yes, Anthropic can use the Python API to do their AI BS, but an improved Python API is also good for anyone else. This doesn't mean that Blender themselves are integrating any gen AI (if you don't already count the denoise filters). Do you really think Blender should have denied the donation?

What do you mean?

Sadly so and it is the people who don't even fund open source projects.