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Also used for rhodiated or palladiated gold-as-in-the-element-aurum.

Sure, I think that's more a literal meaning, rather than the metaphorical sense the article was going for. As a metaphor, it's more common and way longer associated with king cotton.

> hijacks a term that's been used since antiquity to refer to cotton fiber

I thought of the alloy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_gold#White_gold - and the wiki disambiguation page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Gold ) also misses the cotton reference.

It does exist abundantly, but seems mostly to be used in cotton producing countries ...

I thought it was going to be about cocain.

thanks, reminded me of a quite funny old japanese show about how a family got one piece, and how prized it was, specially for the kid , who ends up eating it and not sharing a bit !