Not so bad for a Thursday puzzle! The theme threw me a little, but in times like these, I try to think what Mitch Hedberg would say, and things can work out.

I pulled out 34A Modern lead-in to scrolling: DOOM because I am unfamiliar with doom scrolling. Before I look it up, I imagine that the scrolling is through the comments section. It could be the comment section on your post and find that people are being mean, or it’s the comments in general, and it’s fine until you see that someone you know is saying all kinds of conspiracy theories.

Now I get to look it up.

Turns out that reality is overall better than what I’d thought. It’s just looking through bad news and going down the depressing shit rabbit hole. For those more familiar with doom scrolling, is it also applicable to continuing to read someone’s terrible twitter argument and getting sadder at each tweet?

Now back to Mitch Hedberg’s inspiration for my solving of this puzzle’s theme.

19A This occurs at least once – and never more than three times – in a year: FRIDAYTHEBTH is what I put in, but it changed B it to 13 when I completed the puzzle.

I got very excited when I saw this clue because I wrote a whole post about this topic just last month!

21D Marked by opposite extremes: BIPOLAR is what I put in, but it changed B to 13 to make it 13IPOLAR.

30A Memorable launch of April 11, 1970: APOLLOB (APOLLO13)
26D Runs interference for the offense?: ABETS (A13ETS)

47A 2007 heist film sequel: OCEANSB (OCEANS13)
48A Big joints: BLUNTS (13UNTS)

Completed this one in 24:46. If I had realized that 14A Modest skirt was MIDI and not MAXI, it would have been like 17 minutes.

But if grandmother had wheels, she’d be a streetcar.