A journal of various casual notes and thoughts, collected and edited throughout the day.
Trump is Counting
From “Truth” Social today
@realDonaldTrump
I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
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They are already halfway done in preparing for the next census, in 2030. This is not something that can happen in a week, or a month, or a year, even if he brings Musk and the Doge boys back. I assume he means something else, once he works it out. Also, it's unclear as to what he means by including "modern day" facts. As opposed to old-fashioned facts? And also unclear (surprise) is how or why data from the 2024 election fits in. Maybe to increase/decrease the count for a district depending on which way it voted. Maybe he’ll tell the Census folks to do an interim one, based less on actually counting people and more on asking AI to guess at it.
We do know Trump has proposed before that the census exclude millions of non-legals in the US. This could cost House seats in some states, such as California and Texas. Not through votes, as, contrary to Trump’s theories, they aren’t eligible and they don’t sneak into the booth anyway. Fewer people would mean fewer seats allotted to the state, which could flip the balance either way.
I assume this is all related to the current push for gerrymandering of districts. especially by Republicans hoping to gain more seats.
BTW - I’m a big census fan myself, as I’m into genealogy. A great source back through the decades - once you decipher the handwriting of the 1900s.
Confusing Tutorials
NAS status - for those following along, there’s been more Synology progress, although today was a two steps forward, one step back sort of day. It’s running now with one 4TB drive, Photo and Plex apps are installed, and I can access Plex remotely. My data is slowly moving from the old to new NAS via ethernet - movies are done, TV shows in progress, music to follow and photos. Then I move the hard drive over, format, and set up a RAID1, or maybe SHR.
This process reawakened my annoyance with poor YouTube tutorials, especially those about techie stuff for beginners. Some are done by a well-meaning person who’s either new or just confused. They will do a one-pass recording as they try to do an install/upgrade, etc. Either it’s their very first time, so they are failing and retrying live, or it’s a reinstall, masquerading as a new one, so excuses need to be made all along.
At the other end of the spectrum, some are done by an expert, trying to simplify things, but they just can’t dial it back. When they hit the screen for “Encrypted Markovian Backdating,” they either insist it should be included in every installation or still feel they stll must spend 10 minutes trying to explain it. Rather than saying ”Skip this. I’ll cover it in a separate video, one that’s not labelled ‘A Beginner Guide To . . .’ ”
I should add that there is the occasional video nicely seated between those extremes - I should remember to encourage those when I find them.
At any rate, in spite of the occasional setbacks and challenges, (even) in my senior years, I still do enjoy learning.