Severe depression can be debilitating, but in Melancholia, it also serves as a mechanism for coping with the end of the world. The movie’s opening chapter introduces us to Justine (Kirsten Dunst) as she and her new husband arrive at their wedding reception. The reception, held at an opulent golf resort owned by her brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland, what are you doing here?), serves as the venue for Justine’s latest struggle with what the movies hints is a long history of clinical depression. Over the course of a stressful evening plagued by familial sniping, Justine’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic. It soon become apparent to both Justine and her husband that their marriage is over before it could even begin.

By the movie’s second half, Justine’s depression has become so crippling that she is forced to move in with her sister and brother-in-law. Meanwhile, a newly discovered rogue planet dubbed Melancholia is on a course that may or may not destroy the Earth.

Melancholia, like Lars Von Trier’s other movies, is not kind to its characters. The sumptuous visuals in the movie’s prelude serve as one of the loveliest spoilers in cinematic history, informing the audience that things will not turn out well. But that knowledge detracts nothing from Dunst’s luminous performance or the moments of sheer beauty that Von Trier sprinkles through the rest of the movie. Dunst plays Justine not as a hero or a victim, but simply as a woman whose depression rips away her capacity for self-delusion.

Melancholia is playing in theaters and can also be downloaded from Amazon and iTunes. It looked great on my LCD TV and I’ll be curious to see whether the additional revenue from downloads prompts other studios to experiment with simultaneous theatrical and digital releases.

Over at the Atlantic, constitutional scholar Garrett Epps hypothesizes that the expansion of Medicaid could be the real undoing of health care reform. States opposing the ACA will argue that they have become so dependent on federal Medicaid funding that it must comply with any new conditions attached to the funding (like the expansion of Medicaid to single adults living in poverty), no matter how sweeping or burdensome, or risk losing the funding entirely. According to the states, this amounts to an unconstitutional abuse of Congress’s spending powers. It’s a bit like the ungrateful trust fund kid objecting to his rich uncle’s recent edict that he must maintain a 3.0 GPA or the trust fund spigot gets turned off. And Epps seems to think there’s at least a chance that the conservative Court could buy the argument.

It’s an interesting theory, but I’m skeptical. I’m not aware of any precedent that questions Congress’s ability to attach conditions to the funding it doles out. To rule otherwise would cast doubt on nearly every other program that distributes money to states, whether it’s related to education, food safety, or just about any other realm of public concern. The Court would also have to set forth some fairly specific criteria defining reasonable and unreasonable exercises of Congressional spending powers. Such wading into the legislative weeds might give even the most right-leaning justices pause. My own guess (and it’s only a guess) is that the Medicaid expansion will stand regardless of how the Court rules on the individual mandate.

Some enterprising lads have created a video showing them controlling the iPhone’s Siri assistant with their brains instead of voices. The video could be a hoax, but these guys seem awfully earnest. Assuming this demonstration is genuine, Apple would be wise to hire them now so they can get to work on incorporating this technology into the iPhone 9.

Oregon is using iPads to help people with disabilities vote. It seems like a great idea. Ballots can be marked with a tap (or a puff) and the text can be enlarged or read aloud. iPads might be much more cost-effective than those clunky accessible voting machines that are collecting dust in precincts across the country. I’d still prefer true e-voting that allows voters to submit a secure ballot from any device and location, but that’s probably a pipe dream. But pilot projects like this might get us closer to that vision.