Individuals have rights that come from God? Is that a grant written somewhere?
The notion of rights is completely abstract, a relatively recent concept in our particular society. It doesn't exist in nature. Individual humans and other animals have their bodies and minds, desires, ideas and skills, and that's more or less it. The rest are abstractions a la mode that come and go.
Now, I sure like to have my rights, but I have no illusions about them being god-given. If the society needs to dispense with that notion in order to survive, it will.
I think this entire moralistic debate is misguided. Granted, if RMS was indeed autistic, all the more reason to "judge" him more charitably. But even if he wasn't, its doesn't mean that his cancellation - based on things he might have said and, lest we forget, a smear campaign by an internet mob ignited by false accusations - was justified. RMS was one of the founders of the Free Software Movement - that is why he occupied that post at the FSF. Not because he was the epitome of high Christian morals - why would/should that be a job requirement in his line of work? Do you want righteous activists also demand they be "nice guys"? If so, time to start cancelling the very champions of cancel culture as few of them are "nice people" (which, btw, is bound to happen if history is any indication). You cannot have your cake and eat it, too...
Disparaging an entire nation as "illegal and amoral" qualifies for being vlagged in this forum, I believe. Not to mention the fact that this is a digression from the topic of the thread into vitriolic politics.
Who says what does or does not stand on its own? I am not seeing any negative stereotyping there, just colorful characters.
You might argue that I ought to be Chinese to have a say about it. And that'd be fair - let's ask Chinese people then! I'd be curious what they actually think. Personally, as a Jew, I wouldn't mind at all to see a "stereotypical" Orthodox depiction of a jew, with a yarmulke and all, as long as it's not negative. I fact, I might appreciate it as an artifact educating the audiences about my people's original culture.
The letter is from academics to an academic organization (ACM), so yes: its scope is the rules of engagement in academic institutions. The issues you are bringing up are out of scope.
Unless the rental market in SF bounces back soon, one would expect a sizable portion of landlords to opt for cashing out. Which, in theory, should increase the real estate supply and drive property prices down (AKA rents are a leading indicator of real estate prices). However, real estate seems to be unfazed by that prospect (still very much a bull market), as if it existed in a parallel universe. How to explain this paradox?