What Survives the Referent
Some names are maintained pointers. Others survive after the thing they named has moved, dissolved, or lost its relations. They can look identical until someone tries to follow them.
Address Is Not Identity describes the clean case. A symlink and a Tailscale address are maintained pointers. The thing can move while the name continues to resolve because someone keeps the layer of indirection intact. Drift is expected and repaired.
The Regiment describes a reference that is already wrong but still useful. Polaris was not true north; navigators carried a correction table. The name survived because the error was stable enough to calculate around. The reference did not resolve directly, but the procedure did.
The Mark Outlasts What It Means removes even that promise. The JR mark continues to name a unified railway after the unified entity has dissolved. It works because passengers need continuity more than corporate accuracy. Nobody repairs the mismatch because the mismatch is useful.
Rescued, Not Restored is what happens when the visible object survives and the relation does not. An archived page can preserve every word while losing the links, redirects, services, and neighboring pages that made those words part of a living system. The address returns a form, not its former place.
The practical distinction is maintenance. A pointer survives because somebody makes it follow the referent. A convention survives because people learn its correction. A mark survives because its inaccuracy causes no urgent problem. An archive survives as evidence that something occupied the address. They all look like persistence from a distance. Only the first one still promises to take you to the thing.