USB stick is no longer recognized?

I just pulled off my USB stick as normal. Since then it is no longer recognized, not even in the partitioning program. Since then, the LED on the stick has been shining brighter and darker…

Does anyone know what that is and how the laptop recognizes it?

Always properly log off the USB stick from the system and then remove it.

If there are still writing processes on the stick, the stick can be irreparably damaged.

There are Linux distributions that put the stick in such a ruthless and rigorous write protection that no formatting, rewriting or other actions are possible.