Curation is people voting for content they like regardless of what time the post was posted. That is curation. Can you imagine what the trending page would look like if you completely ignored the number of votes a post received in the first hour? It would be a real trending page then.
A "flat" curation system, under which all voters receive the headline curation rate (currently 25%) could be a simpler way to implement this. The timing of each vote and the current post payout then become irrelevant, leaving manual voters free to vote on content whenever they find it.
The incentives of the current non-linear curation system only reward curation bots, whilst disincentivising manual curators to vote on popular posts. There is very little manual discovery.
Manual discovery is the only true curation. Anything else is just someone pretending to be a curator to make money.