It's a long story, but the short version goes something like this:
At first we worked our cabooses off to publish new original content several times per month. This proved unsustainable, partially because we were becoming more ambitious with our work, but especially owing to stressors that had arisen in my personal life, and I burned out.
I spent a year-long hiatus putting things right, and when we resumed our writing, it was with the understanding that we were switching to a marathon-not-a-sprint publication schedule. The curated column arose to fill in the gaps between our in-house writings. Nowadays many readers specifically visit us for the links, so we feel duty-bound to persist.
I'd just like to thank you for this. I love all your content and have supported the site in the past. But I especially love the curated section - it's better than recommendations I get from other places like Pocket or Instapaper.
Thank you for doing this. Your site is a treasure.
Why the curated section though? I think it distracts to have links to articles from NYTime or Wired on the side.