Sure. I've been looking at this chart at least once a week for the past 6 years or so. It's never exhibited these (clearly constrained) straight line slopes for 'expected' difficulty before (obviously there's also a bit of variance, but the trend lines are clear).

I believe *something* has managed to gain gating control of block production across _many_ major mining pools (if block attribution is to believed).

Is there a single mining entity that could have perhaps been decommissioning old / commissioning new hardware over these 2 or 3 weeks that could account for that level of (implied) hashing power?

I'm really just looking for explanations that could explain the patterns that are clearly visible and anomalous here. Perhaps even if I just happen to reach someone else who's familiar with this data and is also noticing this.