@numericcitizen maybe I think of the second brain thing a bit differently? (I never got into Evernote.) I use my blog as a mind garden and have found the act of taking notes and writing about what I've read an invaluable part of my thinking process.
Taking the time to respond to an article makes me engage with it more deeply, investing more time and energy into processing it and considering connections to other ideas. YMMV obviously but at least the way I'm doing it, I am writing more through the process of keeping the mind garden. I feel so much more intellectually stimulated than I did before starting it three ish years ago, and I've written well over a thousand posts I wouldn't have without it 🤷‍♀️ Perhaps that's a distraction from fiction writing, my main creative focus, but I don't find blogging to be in competition with that work.