They are not inescapable (kind of)
You may ask, “if light can’t escape a black hole, how come we can image them?” Indeed, it was major news when the Event Horizon Telescope first imaged a black hole—or rather, a black hole’s shadow—the silhouette of the monstrosity framed against the glow of superheated material pulled to it by its gravity. Black holes are surrounded with star stuff, pulverized by the hole’s gravity and superheated as it’s drawn ever closer to the event horizon.
But black holes sometimes spit up the material they’ve pulled so close to oblivion, sometimes years after astronomers have consigned a given object to its fate. Granted, this stuff did not pass the event horizon; it was ejected by the black hole before that could happen. So perhaps it’s more fair to say the black hole plays with its food.
