RIP dayan

September 25, 2023 1:31 PM

Some sad news: MeFite dayan passed away last night. He hadn't been on MeFi for quite a while but hung out in a MeFi spinoff group I'm in and was also really involved in the quizzing and Jeopardy communities and I thought people here might want to know.

From his friend thirteen

Hello all, I am posting to share some sad news. Our own Daniel Cohen passed away at home this weekend. He was a great guy, loved by many. The very definition of a polymath. From my perspective, he loved the coolest music, and played the hardest games. He either told or was deeply involved in some of the greatest stories I have ever heard. Guy was on Jeopardy, and snuck in a number joke in a bet to make his friends laugh. He had inexplicable and ridiculously unfair health problems, but he lived happily right up until the second he didn't. Please think of him the next time you pop open a Topo Chico."

If you're on Learned League there's also more quizzing-focused memorial thread on a post on the boards over there (not visible to non LL-ers, sorry). He was a great guy with great energy and I willmiss him.

posted by jessamyn (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 1:31 PM (50 comments total)

.
posted by riruro at 2:20 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by sencha at 2:25 PM on September 25, 2023

Rest easy Dan. I am better for having known you.
posted by Kafkaesque at 2:31 PM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

.
posted by Wordshore at 2:34 PM on September 25, 2023

God speed dayan

.
posted by clavdivs at 2:35 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 2:44 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:04 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:07 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by ourobouros at 3:36 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by an octopus IRL at 4:15 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by dg at 4:36 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by mochapickle at 4:50 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:03 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by cocoagirl at 5:52 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by bryon at 5:55 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by skycrashesdown at 6:27 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by St. Hubbins at 6:48 PM on September 25, 2023

I didn't know him but he seems to have known many of my friends, especially the best ones. He is being dearly mourned today.
posted by babelfish at 7:12 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:00 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by purpleclover at 9:44 PM on September 25, 2023

.
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 10:54 PM on September 25, 2023

.

Looking at his activity page, I see that the two front page posts he made were about the death of Elliott Smith and the Great White nightclub fire. The former had an impact on me, not only because I was a fan of Smith’s, but also because the previous winter I had been an exchange student at Hampshire College, and a lot of my friends there took his death, he was an alum, personally. As for the latter, a couple of years later I moved to Rhode Island, and got to know many people who lost friend or family in the fire. I mention this because by the point these posts were made MetaFilter was the first site I checked when I went online, so I may have heard about both events from his posts.
posted by Kattullus at 12:01 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:09 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 4:34 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Songdog at 5:30 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by heyho at 6:03 AM on September 26, 2023

oh man, we became pals because we're both Bills fans when he briefly lived in DC. Just a deeply funny, weird in the most delightful way dude. This sucks.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:51 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

.
posted by Lynsey at 7:28 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by briank at 9:07 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Fizz at 10:01 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:58 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:49 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Ceridwen at 11:56 AM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by niicholas at 12:04 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by lovermont at 4:27 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by samthemander at 4:35 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by zamboni at 5:42 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by Mitheral at 6:18 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by ashbury at 8:26 PM on September 26, 2023

.
posted by sudama at 7:18 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

.
posted by mcbeth at 5:35 PM on September 27, 2023

I didn't know him at all -- but when I see people here who I really respect mourn him, it makes me wish I had gotten the chance to meet him.

RIP.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:45 PM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

My deepest sympathies to all who were lucky enough to know and love him.
posted by terrapin at 6:45 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's the public obit.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:54 AM on September 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

.
posted by gudrun at 5:57 PM on September 29, 2023

.
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:27 AM on October 2, 2023

.
posted by readery at 2:48 PM on October 2, 2023

.
posted by maura at 2:32 AM on October 3, 2023

.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:35 AM on October 8, 2023

.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:37 AM on October 16, 2023