I pulled up an old bookmark file that I had backed up on CD-R and pretty much every single link was dead. So at best, it was just a memory of something that I thought was worth saving at one point and might go back to someday. So more like what you said: "history of things I've found that are interesting" but not being able to use them to get the website (unless it's in Wayback Machine perhaps).

So we file it away to relieve that mental stress. We now have the option to retrieve it should it ever become necessary, but we probably won’t.

I find the same thing to be true of note-taking and storage units.

Bookmarks alone don't quite do it because stuff is moved or dies. A saved copy of the webpage does do it, though, along with the bookmark. SingleFile is a godsend here. I also really like Shiori and other similar bookmark managers that snapshot the webpage along with the bookmark. Even if the saved copy is incomplete or not high-fidelity, it's often enough.