Hi I found something that made this error go away and allows me to use gnome software UI thing on my mini.
I ran the suggestions from this post:
I ran
fwupdmgr refresh
apt full-upgrade
then I think I ran
fwupdmgr refresh again.
Now I can update via the gnome-software thing again.
I was afraid to run apt full-upgrade, because , well it sounds scary - but it worked. Thanks to @mladen and @Quarnero from the other post for the solution.
I waited a bit to see if the glitch returned but so far no problems.
-nonattribution