Miriam Adelson is buying … an NBA team?

💰💰💰 A Maverick Move

Miriam Adelson, Sheldon’s widow and majority stockholder of Las Vegas Sands, has apparently sold $2 billion in company stock — to fund the purchase of a majority stake in … the Dallas Mavericks? Yes. No word on whether the team will eventually change cities. [Yahoo Sports]

• In other rich-lady news: It’s still barely a rumor (the only source: “we hear”), but Scott “Vital Vegas” Roeben reports that Elaine Wynn plans to bankroll an art museum in Symphony Park. [Casino.org]

🌲 If a Tree Falls in a Parking Lot …

Is Formula 1’s sordid treegate saga nearing its end? A bunch of replacement trees have been spotted on-site at Bellagio, presumably to tag in for the ones chopped down for the race — and tie off one of the most-heated talking points of the whole F1 saga. Question: Will they just cut these ones down next year? [Review-Journal]

• Related: Our speedy post-race hot take. [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

🥵 Climate Change Is About More than Weather

A new climate report makes abundantly clear what most of us already sense: That climate change will bring increasingly dire problems to bear on the Southwest: drought, water shortages, declining agricultural production (and therefore food scarcity likely to impact marginalized communities first), and more. [Nevada Current]

🏁 So, About Next Year’s F1 …

Now that the zoom-zoom is over, all that remains of Las Vegas’s Formula 1 experience is a few weeks of traffic-snarling teardown. So let’s ask what we can learn for next year’s iteration. Who do we ask? Why, Jonathan Jossel, CEO of the Plaza Hotel and Casino, who shares his refreshingly honest take. [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]

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🤔 What Do We Mean by ‘Thankful’?

Here’s a note I neglected to include in last week’s roundup of what you’re thankful for. I’m running it now because its topic and sarcasm will both be relevant for our foreseeable future:

“I’m thankful for orange cones … feel as though they’ve become part of my family.” (Barbara Mascialino)

🧷 What’s the Meaning of ‘Punk”

One sub-theme running through this New York Times feature on LV’s Punk Rock Museum is the question of what, exactly, defines the spirit of punk? One answer involves a gleeful smashing of pieties, as demonstrated by this passage about Fat Mike Burkett, the museum’s founder:

“One of the few disagreements he has had with the rest of the museum’s management, he told me in all seeming earnestness, was over his idea of playing ‘Yakety Sax’ whenever the wheelchair lift to the second floor made its ascent.”

No mention of Fat Mike’s post-Oct. 1 controversy, either.

🕹️ Drone Man

For the Nevada arts website Double Scoop, City Cast contributor Brent Holmes describes an artwork he found in a local thrift store:

“A rendering of a cottage produced in the loveless style of Thomas Kinkade, which tends to give my visual cortex an anemic response, were it not for the military drone soaring just above the chimney — inexplicable, ominous, and hilarious.”

Welcome to the work of former Reno artist Joseph DeLappe, who added images of war drones to plain thrift store images — to critique the ubiquity and moral ambiguity of drone warfare — and donated them back to thrift stores in the vicinity of Creech Air Force Base, a center of America’s drone program. More at the “Thrift Drones” X page.

Today

• 🎷 UNLV’s Contemporary and Latin Jazz Ensembles |7:30-10 p.m. | $10 | UNLV
• 🎤 ‘Who Knows?’ (variety show) | 11:55 p.m. to 2 a.m. | $12.68 | Arts District

Thursday, Nov. 30

• 🎤 ‘Seven Soloists Sink or Swim’ (variety show) | 2 p.m. | $12 | Arts District
• 🎄 WinterFest Tree Lighting, Drone Show | 5 and 6:45 p.m. | Free | Henderson
• 💬 Donald Farnsworth of Magnolia Editions (lecture) | 7 p.m. | Free | UNLV
• 🎭 30-ish Plays in 60-ish Minutes | 8 p.m. | $27.99 | Valley View & Harmon

Friday, Dec. 1

• 💬 ‘Sketching an Indigenous Moral Theory’ (lecture) | 3-5 p.m. | Free | UNLV
• 🖼️ First Friday | 5-11 p.m. | Free | Arts District
• 🎸 Moksha, Elevated Undergrounds | 5 p.m. | $15 | Henderson
• 🎭 ‘The Odyssey’ (theater) | 7 p.m. | $10 | Charleston Heights Arts Center

F1: The View From the Plaza

🏎️ With F1’s Vegas takeover behind us, co-host Dayvid Figler engages Jonathan Jossel, CEO of the Plaza hotel-casino, in a frank discussion of the race’s up- and downsides, who benefitted, and what can be done better next year.