Terms I Didn't Know

The Glomar Response - from a tweet -

"Leopold's trying to up the bar now that everyone is getting Glomars."

In response to an image of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was completely redacted.

The story at Unredacted about the history of the Glomar Response is fascinating.  CIA told a FOIA requester that it could

 “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of  “the use of unmanned aerial vehicles”

.......................................................

Revanche

"It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Trump’s genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the other."  From Ta-Nejosi Coats, "The First White President" in The Atlantic.

From Merriam Webster:

"Definition of revanche
:revenge; especially: a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status"

.......................................................

Eldritch

Also from the Ta-Nehisi Coats article:

"To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies." 

From Wikipedia:

"Eldritch is an English word used to describe something as otherworldly, weird, ghostly, or uncanny.
Eldritch may refer to:
Andrew Eldritch (born 1959), singer, songwriter
Eldritch (band), an Italian heavy metal band
Eldritch Wizardry, a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game supplement
Eldritch (video game), a video game for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based on the Cthulhu Mythos
Eldritch Moon, an expansion from the Magic the Gathering card game
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a 1965 science fiction novel by US writer Philip K. Dick" 

....................................................

Topoi (plural of typos)

From a review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam  in the Mekong Review:

"The even-handedness, the flag-draped history, bittersweet narrative, redemptive homecomings and the urge toward “healing” rather than truth are cinematic topoi that we have come to expect from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through their films about the Civil War, Prohibition, baseball, jazz and other themes in United States history."

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of topos
plural topoi play  \-ˌpȯi\
:a traditional or conventional literary or rhetorical theme or topic 

.......................................................


I heard today that Twitter is going from 140 characters to 280.  That doesn't sound like a good idea.  As one tweeter responded:  140 characters was my best editor ever.   These terms have been building up as a draft post.  I think four are enough for most people, so I'll quit here.