what are the chances that, with absolutely no negative change in hashrate, we deviated as much as 1+ hour-long block interval away from the average of 10 minutes? Wouldn't it be more likely that there was indeed a temporarily decrease in hashrate which then caused this big gap? Probabilities aside.
it's impossible to know! but let's put it another way: 45-60 minute block intervals happen fairly frequently (more than once when I've been demonstrating Bitcoin to a newbie, and as well when I've been paying for something in person!)
meanwhile, difficulty adjusted yesterday. Did the the difficulty drop?
Not sure what that has to do with a single day drop in nethash. If we had >114 blocks on the 23rd the difficulty would have increased more yesterday.
that's correct, the difficulty increased despite the alleged hashrate drop.
next question:
is any hashrate drop in any way meaningful if the difficulty increased at the next adjustment?
(I'm going to give you a clue, the answer begins with the letter "n")
Not sure what you are getting at. Are you saying you think the number of blocks on any given day has no impact on the difficulty? Or that you don't care how much the difficulty changes, just if it goes up or down?