  We provide a bird's eye view on developments in analyzing the long time,
large crowd behavior of Cucker-Smale alignment dynamics. We consider a class of
(fully-)discrete models, paying particular attention to general alignment
protocols in which agents, with possibly time-dependent masses, are driven by a
large class of heavy-tailed communication kernels. The presence of
time-dependent masses allows, in particular, non-symmetric communication. While
revisiting known results in the literature, we also shed new light of various
aspects on the long time flocking/swarming behavior, driven by the decay of
energy fluctuations and heavy-tailed connectivity. We also discuss the large
crowd dynamics in terms of the hydrodynamic description of Euler alignment
models.
