Zotero simplified a lot of my note taking / "information retaining" from stuff I bookmark / read. Much better than Obsidian etc.

> Add thing to Zotero, 99% of the time the metadata comes with it and is searchable already.

> To mark it as read, make a note for it (usually consists of main idea, good / bad ideas in the article, few sentences).

> Zotero entries without note are assumed unread.

for my diary / misc notes I use vscode with some markdown plugins, foam has like daily note functionality which is nice, add a new diary entry and add some tags ezpz