It sounds like the donor had requirements. From The Tribune:

The University of Chicago has received a $100 million gift from an anonymous donor to support free expression, marking what may be the largest-ever single donation to support such values in higher education, the university announced Thursday.

And:

Discussions surrounding the donation have been ongoing for over a year, according to a university spokesperson.

From https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2024/09/26/university-chicago-donation-free-speech-expression-forum :

The gift was ridiculed by advocates involved in the encampment that highlighted abuses against Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas War and torn down by the university in the spring.

“It’s truly a slap in the face,” said Yousseff Hasweh, a U of C grad who’s diploma was withheld by the university for two months, allegedly for his involvement in the protest.

Facts?! That just makes them devolve to No true Scotsman rhetoric. ;-)

Vance and the rest – including Trump himself – are suggesting that the attacks are because Democrats are demonizing Trump and Democrats need to tone down the vitriol, ignoring that Trump has said Democrats are destroying America and that we won’t have a country left if they get in office and all the rest. At least Vance is – after saying on TV with Dana Bash that they have confirmed reports from Springfield (in an interview about the pet eating thing) – that he, too, ought to tone down his rhetoric, but let’s see if he can stick with that for more than a day.

Here’s a story from July about the left/right spread in toxic language: https://theconversation.com/trump-shooting-is-a-warning-about-how-toxic-language-leads-to-violence-234637

Note the disparity on their graphic:

Ehn. The latest guy called Putin a terrorist on camera, which is something a Trumper would never say.

I’m fine with removing the Audubon name from any group – not because of John Audubon himself, but because the current Audubon Society seems to be an unscrupulous, anti-union, money-grubbing, greenwashing mess.

Refresher on McCabe from The Guardian:

McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020. In October 2021, McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department.

I mention this because y’all know that Trumpers will immediately brush off McCabe’s comments as a known-bad-guy who was fired for being so awful and is now trying to get revenge.

You’re right. I hear you. Intellectually, I understand that the conservative/fundamentalist mindset gives higher importance to following leaders and is more triggered by moral disgust. I understand that a conservative may feel a liberal is less moral because liberals ‘lack’ a moral imperative to follow leaders simply because they are leaders. I even accept that agreeing to a premise has utility by getting everyone to work towards a common goal. Unfortunately, I get stuck on the bit where the premise seems illogical to me, or the leader seems to be obviously lying. That’s the part where any intellectual understanding of why someone might choose to ignore obvious red flags flies to the wayside and I can’t figure out what to do about it.

I’m pretty sure that journalists should continuously report which things are unfounded lies, but I don’t think that will sway those who believe those lies. It might, however, convince the continuously emerging crop of newly interested people to be skeptical.

I spent a good while writing up a reply, but it was long and the main point was: while any group of 100+ people is likely to have a bad actor, you look for credible proof (like Edward Snowden showing evidence rather than Sidney Powell saying she had ‘visions’). Side bit: tales of killing/eating/sexually-exploiting babies and pets by a GROUP should always be taken as a manipulative lie because it always is. When some whacko actually tries that crap, the Boys in Blue get up in arms – even if it means ignoring pressure from their bosses, “He’s Illuminati. Let it go.” No. That sort of thing gets exposed.

I kinda understand how some people fall for conspiracies, but I don’t understand how so many people would VOTE for someone who reliable falls for and promotes so very many obvious conspiracies.

@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me a Simpsons cartoon of people picnicking while Trump shouts, “In Springfield they’re eating the dogs!”, causing everyone to look on in shock and incredulity.

If you missed it, I highly recommend watching it. High drama. Great visual reactions that you’ll miss if you only hear or read it. Just for fun, here’s a composite image of Daily Beast posts that were flying up as I read reviews elsewhere:

… but even a monster like Dick Cheney – a man who largely created a needless war and supposedly LIKES being compared to Darth Vader – even that monster thinks, “Trump would be horrible for the U.S.”

Good.

@aihorde@lemmy.dbzer0.com draw for me a spider’s web with a red light that attracts male fireflies to come have a good time at the web bordello

I basically agree with you, but I took it as both a warning to Democrats to stay vigilant and as permission for Republicans to abandon Trump.

That’s it. Audubon sucks. I was immediately reminded of a recent Vox story on How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact

The National Audubon Society, the beloved bird conservancy organization, rewards regenerative ranchers with its seal of approval in the form of a label that reads “Grazed on bird friendly land” and “Audubon certified.” Such beef can be purchased at about 250 retail and online stores.

Then there’s how Massachusetts Audubon pretended it was going to chop down its trees so it could continue NOT cutting them to get paid to preserve them for carbon-offsets. Propublica:

However improbable the idea might be of a conservation group actually permitting the removal of so much timber, Mass Audubon officials said they had simply followed the state’s rules in claiming that the society could heavily log its forest.

Then there’s E & E News (politico) discussion of Audubon’s internals:

The organization’s former president and CEO, David Yarnold, resigned under pressure in 2021, following POLITICO’s reports of widespread staff dissatisfaction at Audubon, especially among workers of color and the LGBTQ community (Greenwire, April 21, 2021).

An external audit later substantiated some of those claims, and pointed to widespread cultural problems. “Nearly all of the women we interviewed and many of the men commented that implicit bias toward women and people of color is prevalent at Audubon,” the audit found (Greenwire, May 6, 2021).

Refugio Mariscal, a former geographic information systems analyst in Audubon’s Great Lakes regional office, said that management at the national level had “almost gotten worse since Yarnold left.”

“I would say as a person of color, there’s still a lot of issues that Audubon needs to deal with,” he said.

Mariscal left Audubon in January for a job at another environmental nonprofit. He said workplace issues at Audubon, plus better pay at the new job, factored into his decision.

“The general culture within Audubon is not very welcoming to staff,” he said in January. “They seem to have a tough time letting go of their old ways of doing things.”

Reminds me of the incident in February where a waymo tried to get through a bunch of street revelers, and their response was to set it on fire. From the old pcmag story :

San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson noted that it had tallied 55 incidents where self-driving vehicles had interfered with rescue operations in the city.

Edit: unrelated to above quote, pc mag also says:

In some cases, residents have put orange cones on the hoods of cars, which makes them temporarily immobile.

(see also the autopian story it references)

Reminder that Palantir is the same company whose bosses are deep in bed with AmericaPAC – which got big write-ups (link is to one comment, but you can read more there and lots of places) because Elon Musk is gathering voter data seemingly for that PAC to target swing state voters with canvassing efforts.

I wish I’d been online yesterday to see this because it is way worse than just not working, so I’m repeating this whenever I see it brought up: They’re targeting swing state voters (via in-person canvassers) to vote Trump. The key pieces are Palantir, which compiles data to see trends and ‘insights’ and a new FEC opinion that says PACs can work with candidates for canvassing. CNBC had a big article on it and states (archive – emphasis is mine):

[…] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk’s political confidants – which is interesting because he’s at Palantir which was you’d think of as his old buddy Peter Theil’s gig. Palantir sells info. As long as they get good info, we can expect them tailor the perfect messages to win over swing states voters, because those voters are (unintentionally) telling them exactly how to do it.

That’s not the point, though, is it? It doesn’t matter if Nazis mask faster. What matters is that there are Nazis and other non-state-actors who will happily try to identify and dox people who get in their way. Such doxxers aren’t even necessarily at the protests. They might be in, say, Russia and looking to shut up pro-Western activists in neighboring countries.

It may be that no one in Sweden is immuno-comprosmied and that no one in Sweden could get hacked or doxxed when their identity is uncovered, but for the rest of the world, there are plenty of reasons a person might want to wear a mask that don’t involve wanting to be riot-ready.