It’s a made-up story. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium enrichment and places that do uranium enrichment aren’t even going to talk to you unless you have a host of government licenses. Depleted uranium only has a few applications like:

• Armor penetrating munitions
• Counterweights for aeronautics
• Ironically, as radiation shielding

This makes it very hard for collectors to obtain (it can take people years) and actual samples of DU are going to be more expense than regular uranium. The story makes as much sense as your grandmother buying cubic zirconia jewelry and being “scammed” with actual diamonds.

You said it yourself:

While I preferred avoiding dynamically allocating memory, as it was much less risky, there were certainly times it just made sense or was the only way.

This is not a common attitude to have outside of embedded and similar areas. Most programmers dynamically allocate memory without a second thought and not as a last resort. Python is one of the most popular programming languages, but how often do you see Python code that is capable of running without allocating memory at runtime?

I think a lot of equity based language ends up being unclear, but once the intent is understood the goal is a positive one.

Okay, but it is actually doing anything? Do people with negative biases (i.e. the people who need the most convincing) respond positively to this type of language? I really can’t imagine that they would. Especially when you admit that it ends up unclear. Are you actually helping people in prison when you refer to them as “experiencing the criminal-justice system” or is it like the article says:

[belonging] to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions

Furthermore, why should this drain the positivity from existing language? “Experiencing the criminal-justice system” does draw focus to the fact of the wider experience, but that’s not always what you need or want to express. If you’re focusing on people who have been wrongfully convicted then shouldn’t go with “wrongfully imprisoned” since it’s a more power phrasing? I don’t see how milquetoast corporate-speak like “experiencing the criminal-justice system due to systemic bias” does anything aside from protecting those biases by making them sound unworthy of outrage.